In 1974, in Washington D.C., amidst a backdrop of economic turbulence and social unrest, the seeds of the Institute for Local Self-reliance were sown. David Morris, Neil Seldman, and Gil Friend, driven by a shared vision of community resilience, founded the Institute in a townhouse in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. Their goal was to demonstrate that our economies and environments can thrive when rooted in community cooperation and mutual aid. Fifty years later, in the face of prevailing national norms promoting centralization, ILSR continues to challenge the status quo through research, advocacy, and grassroots organizing, promoting a framework of decentralized production, responsibility, and authority.

Related Resources

• Kilowatt Counter – A Consumers Guide to Energy Concepts, Quantities, and Use: When ILSR opened its doors, the price of oil was in the process of quadrupling over 18 months. Our first publication was a guide for people to understand the concept of energy and how all forms of energy interrelate and can be comparatively measured.
• The Dawning of Solar Cells: Published in 1975, we argued for a consortium of cities to collectively drive the price of solar down by purchasing ever-greater quantities of solar cells at a guaranteed ever-declining price.
• Self-Reliance Newsletter: The first issue contained an explanation of local self-reliance and analyzed why we need large companies.
• Salvaging the Future: Waste-Based Production: Using a hypothetical American city of one million people, this groundbreaking study on value added to discarded material presents a detailed forecast of the costs and benefits of recycling.
• Creating Wealth from Everyday Items: This report was one in a series of reuse reports, funded by the US EPA, to document product reuse as an important economic development and waste reduction strategy.
• Cutting the Waste Stream in Half: Community Record-Setters Show How: ILSR report for the Environmental Protection Agency showing communities that had recycling levels above 50%. This was essential research that was the foundation of zero waste goals and planning in the years to come.

Transcript

David Morris: We chose the term “local self-reliance” consciously, but perhaps a bit glibly. What we found out was that people couldn’t understand the term, so they would forever introduce me when I was giving a speech or introduce one of us who might’ve been on television, reading off the teleprompter as “The Institutes for Self-Reliance.” The word local was dropped, and it was dropped 95% of the time, so you realize that there was something going on here. I concluded, finally, that Americans understand the term self-reliance, self-reliance, individual reliance, but the concept of local self-reliance seems almost a oxymoron. It’s a contradiction in terms. For us, it’s not a contradiction in terms, because no human being is an island. What we emphasize, as much as anything, is cooperation and mutual aid and a sense of community. Local Self-Reliance is, in fact, the name, remains the name, but only in the last 10 years will I say that people almost always get it right now. Neil Seldman: Back in the ’70s, there were very few groups that understood that the local place was the place to be, and that’s where you could make fundamental change. That’s what we proceeded to do. Reggie Rucker: Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of Building Local Power. I am your co-host, Reggie Rucker, and this is a really special episode. Of course, every episode is special. It’s like when you have children, all of your children are special, you love all of them equally, but really you have favorites, but you love them all equally. Anyways, this one is special because we are releasing it the day after celebrating our, ILSR’s, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, 50th birthday. May 1, 1974 is our birthday, and there is no one I’d rather celebrate this milestone occasion with more than my co-host, Luke Gannon. What’s up, Luke? Luke Gannon: Aw, Reggie. I feel the same way. Now, everyone, it’s really a special here for a couple of reasons. Of course, ILSR’s 50th anniversary and y’all, Reggie just got engaged, so it is truly a year for celebration. Reggie, a huge congratulations to you and your fiance. Reggie Rucker: Thank you, Luke. Definitely a happy moment for me. There’s so much to celebrate today. And of course, I’m going to bring this back to celebrating ILSR turning 50. That’s wild. We are in the middle of the city series. We started in Detroit, spotlighting folks doing great work to build local power there. As we’ve moved to DC in this part of the series, it is beyond fitting that we’re able to take this moment to look at how our organization was born in DC and born out of everything happening in the district in the late ’60s and early ’70s. And Luke, I love those clips that you selected to open the episode, especially that last bit from David Morris, where he talks about no human being is an island and this sense of cooperation, mutual aid, and community. When you build that, you build local power. I love that DC is embedded into the fabric of our organization, as an inspiration to so much of what we do. Luke Gannon: Now, this episode isn’t just about ILSR’s founding. It’s a lens into how the history of DC shaped ILSR into existence, how the economy influenced the very basis of our work, and how the political landscape pushed us to keep fighting for a more sustainable and equitable present and future. Let’s dive in. David Morris: The history of Washington DC is a story of the local and the national. It’s a story of top down and bottom up, and it’s a story of the quest for sovereignty. In 1963, the good citizens of the United States of America gave the citizens of the District of Columbia the right to vote for the President. Not the right to have a voting delegate in Congress, but the right to vote for President. 1967, they got the right to vote for school board. And 1973, they got home rule. Home rule meant that, for the first time since 1874, they got the right to elect their city council and their mayor. That is 1974. They got into office in 1975, and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance was born right in the middle of that, in May of 1974. MUSIC: Stayed on freedom. David Morris: The other aspect of Washington DC, which was the sea in which we swam, is that it was a Black city. 700,000 people, and it was two-thirds Black. And in 1968, so this is six years before the institute was founded, there were riots after Martin Luther King died, all around the country. But in Washington DC, there were a thousand businesses that were destroyed. Many of the commercial strips that were owned by Black businesses were destroyed. There was the equivalent of $2 billion in property damage, in current dollars. It was two decades, almost three decades, before those were rebuilt. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance was born in a city that was coming into its own, that was gaining a certain amount of authority, that was agitated, that was angry, that was organized. Luke Gannon: That’s David Morris, co-founder of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. As DC was in economic turbulence, co-founders David Morris, Neil Seldman, and Gil Friend saw a need to fill. Here’s how Neil recalls the origin story. Neil Seldman: When Gil Friend, David Morris, and myself founded the Institute, we were all neighbors. We all lived in Adams Morgan, and we were all working on community projects. We realized that there were three areas of the community that no one was focusing on. Food production, recycling of raw materials, and energy, sunlight falling on rooftops and so forth. I don’t even know if I chose recycling or I was assigned it. I was assigned recycling because we wanted to start a business in recycling, and I had a good deal of business background. I helped run my father’s retail store, and I worked in factories all my life. David Morris: Neil Seldman was the most rooted, probably, of the three of us. A very tight-knit family, raised in Brooklyn. His father owned a retail mattress shop, and his aunt owned a factory. So the three of us joined together and started the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in a three-story townhouse on 18th Street in Washington DC. Luke Gannon: The Institute was set up in a residential neighborhood to demonstrate that our energies and our economies can blossom when rooted in community. David Morris: It was an expression of our thesis and a demonstration that urban areas could be producers as well as consumers, that we could produce basic wealth at the local level. In our townhouse, one thing we did was use the roof and put solar collectors. We had just started producing solar cells for terrestrial application in the United States. They were producing heat, and then we grew food on the roof, as well. We had a Clivus Multrum composting toilet, a massive thing, in the basement. Neil Seldman oversaw the growing of hundreds of thousands of worms there. Neil Seldman: We succeeded in putting a greenhouse on the roof. We experimented with raising worms, with raising fish. We raised sprouts. We built a business. We were the major supplier of sprouts to restaurants throughout the city. David Morris: The Institute was very much interested in, simply as a demonstration, simply as a symbol, but it reflected our feeling that you could extract useful work from so many overlooked things, whether it happened to be human genius or the ground or the rooftop. Luke Gannon: David recalls that from its inception, they wanted ILSR to accomplish two things. David Morris: We wanted to develop and promote a framework. We wanted a framework of local self-reliance that could be applied throughout all the sectors of the economy, broadly. But then we also wanted to get down and dirty. We wanted to get to the point where we could see what worked and what didn’t work, and that meant choosing sectors where individuals could work in depth. We decided that we would use certain criteria to choose those sectors. One of the criteria was that working there would demonstrate the concept of local self-reliance. The second was that it would be a sector where the local authority, that is local government, would have a significant ability to establish the rules. The third is that we could achieve something. That it was doable within a certain timeframe to have an impact. One of those was solid waste. And it’s sort of an obvious thing, because solid waste is one of those things that cities, at that time, had almost complete control over and still have primary control over. They set the rules not only for pickup, but what you can throw away, where it goes, who hauls it. Luke Gannon: The Institute was established with the capacity to promptly react and adapt to economic dynamics. As David exemplifies, one of the Institute’s primary focuses at its inception was energy, prompted by the city and national focus on oil. David Morris: We chose energy because when we set up in 1974, we had just gone through an oil embargo, a quadrupling in oil prices, and the country was desperately trying to move toward what they called Project Independence. We did an investigation to say, what is the possibility… The nation chose nuclear. They wanted a thousand nuclear plants by the year 2000. And we looked and we looked and we looked, and we decided that there was this technology called a solar cell, which could generate electricity when struck by sunlight and had only been used, until very recently, for space satellites. We chose that because it was clear that you had enough space and enough sunlight to generate sufficient electricity to really make yourself a producer to the point where if you couldn’t decentralize the entire electricity system, you could certainly participate in it as an active generator, as an active producer. In the late 1970s when there was another quadrupling of oil prices, suddenly, the concept of waste-to-energy was born. The national environmental movements embraced it. We were going to take our garbage, we were going to generate energy, and it was going to reduce our dependence on imported oil. We didn’t believe that. We believed that the embodied energy in solid waste was more important, that we should recycle, recover, reuse that waste, and not burn it simply for the BTU value. Neil Seldman, as the man in charge of that, was to oppose the incinerators and work with coalitions all around the country. Local people who didn’t want an incinerator in their backyard. They didn’t want a garbage transfer station in their backyard. They didn’t want a landfill in their backyard. We worked with them to stop the incinerators and then worked with them to promote recycling. That was our first success in the 1980s. When I say our, it wasn’t the Institute’s first success. We always worked in coalitions, so these were coalitions usually led by… Well, not always led by locals, but usually minorities because that’s where the powers that be installed incinerators and installed garbage transfer stations. Those were the front lines in fighting them. In the 1980s, there were several plans that were canceled, and by the late ’80s, the majority of those that were planned had been canceled. Luke Gannon: From the beginning, ILSR recognized the potential of converting waste into energy. Neil dedicated significant attention to solid waste policy. Neil Seldman: When it came to solid waste management policy, I attached myself to people who had expertise. These were the recyclers in California. From there, we developed not only the expertise for the institute, but also a network of technicians to work with. That is when we started fighting incinerators, because we were promoting recycling, economic development, and recovering the materials so that cities could be productive cities. Cities could be producing things instead of importing everything that the cities needed, both energy, raw materials, food. Luke Gannon: In the mid-1970s, cities and federal agencies were promoting incineration. That’s when ILSR entered the anti-incineration movement, led largely by Neil. Neil Seldman: The move to incineration started in the mid-1970s. EPA was promoting it. The Department of Energy was promoting it. EPA gave out planning grants, and the Department of Energy gave out what they called commercialization grants. Meaning, “Here’s 50,000 to plan it from the EPA, and here’s 10 million to start construction.” There were, in the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s, there were about 400 incinerator planned for the country. Every major population center in the country, someone wanted to build an incinerator. Only about 90 were built. The remainder were killed. We helped directly cancel 35, then we started writing manuals on how to do it. We distributed those very widely, and other communities started knocking out incinerators left and right. For many years, I would say from ’76 to ’86, we were the only national organization fighting incinerators. In fact, the national environmental organizations thought incinerators were a good thing, until we were part of the effort to build this grassroots movement nationwide against incineration. We were incredibly effective. We were involved in 35 successful fights across the country to defeat incinerators. We lost two. It developed our reputation as the go-to organization, not only to stop incineration, but what to do after you stop the incinerator. Luke Gannon: In one instance, Neil recounts, there was a garbage incinerator under construction in Austin, Texas. Many believed it would be impossible to halt the project, but local organizers mobilized, and ILSR came in with technical support, and they successfully halted the construction. Neil Seldman: The orchestration was we showed that if the city were to cancel the incinerator, they would lose $22 million. But if they invested in recycling, composting, and reuse, they would save $120 million over the twenty-year life of the planned incinerator. We explained that the incinerator is going to be very costly not only to build but to operate, therefore taxes are going to have to be increased. The business community deserted the incinerator and came over to our side. Luke Gannon: By 1986, national environmental groups had embraced the message of local organizers and began opposing incineration, as well. Neil Seldman: You can times 300 canceled incinerators by their cost of maybe $500 million, $600 million each, and you could see that we’ve saved the country billions in money that would’ve been spent adding to pollution and making people’s health much worse than it is. By 1985, more incinerators were canceled than were planned. The legacy of our work has equipped people with the information they need to stop a planned incinerator. What we’re working on now is shutting down existing incinerators, which is much more difficult, as you can imagine, than stopping a planned one. Luke Gannon: Now here, we’re going to take a brief detour to explain how we expanded our work from our home base of DC. In the 1980s, David authored a book highlighting cities as the focal points of local economies, emphasizing their potential to foster economic sustainability through strategic empowerment. Impressed by David’s insights, the Mayor of St. Paul extended an invitation for him to visit the Twin Cities. David Morris: And Mayor Latimer invited me to St. Paul and sat me in a room next to the mayor’s office with three of his senior officials, and they grilled me on how local self-reliance could be applied to the city of St. Paul. They essentially contracted with the Institute to help to design and implement what they call the homegrown economy in St. Paul. I was there, on contract through the Institute, for about a year and fell in love with the city of St. Paul and fell in love with Minnesota. Luke Gannon: David chose to stay in St. Paul, due to the accessibility of political leaders compared to Washington DC. Here, elected officials considered the needs of local residents, including children attending nearby schools, hospital staff, and business owners, which fostered this strong sense of community. At that time, the city was deeply entrenched in its local roots, so ILSR expanded its ideas and research into the Twin Cities, David Morris: Among the things that we were doing were studies that tracked dollars as they flowed through neighborhoods. The District of Columbia had had an announcement, when a new McDonald’s opened, that it was a job generator. We put out a little booklet and said, no, you lose jobs every time a McDonald’s opened up. Which is not intuitive, because, after all, there weren’t jobs there yesterday and there are today. But what we said is, if people were going to eat anyway, and if they weren’t going to go to McDonald’s to eat, then they were going to go to the grocery store and buy it, or they were going to go to a sit-down restaurant. However else they spent their food dollar, more of it was going to remain in the local community. That had a very large impact. Luke Gannon: In the late-1980s, the Institute, led by Neil’s work in waste, published Salvaging the Future, a seminal work that synthesized ILSR’s perspectives on economy and sustainability. Neil Seldman: We published Salvaging the Future to show that a city of 1 million people can create 1,000 jobs and create economic value of $2 billion a year if you go from wasting to recycling and composting. That’s the state of the art. That’s what circularity, sustainability, and environmental justice… All of those three concepts were all tied into our initial work Luke Gannon: After half a century, the Institute remains steadfast in its foundational principles, advocating for the strength of community, the significance of local economies, and the decentralization of production, responsibility, and authority. This embodies the very essence of local self-reliance. Neil Seldman: People are predisposed to do the right thing. They just need the encouragement and the public policy. If we want to live better, we have to change the rules to reflect the way we want to live our values and our pocketbooks. We feel that decentralizing decision-making is perhaps the only way to save the world. We wanted to change the way people thought about resources, about energy. We wanted the Institute to become a household word, and we’re pretty close to that right now. Local self-reliance is the ability of a community to produce its basic needs without having to rely on outside sources. Not to become completely independent, but to be able to produce enough that a city has leverage on the outside world. If you don’t like a certain product, you can design and build what you want in your city with the resources of the city, the financial resources, the material resources, like sunlight and newspaper, and of course, the labor power to be productive, and use your capital efficiently and your labor power efficiently. There’s an expression. We want an environmental policy as if every molecule mattered. To use a molecule as efficiently as you can to eliminate waste and enhance the way you live. While you’re doing it, make friends and neighbors. David Morris: We work on national policymaking more than we did. We focused, the first 30 years, almost entirely on local and state. We went from local to state to national, but at the same time, we’re forever grounded. Whatever you do at the international level, the rubber meets the road at the local level. We’re always focused on the decentralization of production, the decentralization of authority, and the decentralization of responsibility. Those three things, we sometimes call it the arc of community. Authority, responsibility, and capacity. That’s what local self-reliance means. Luke Gannon: To David, Neil, and Gil, your contributions have led me to host this podcast today, a role for which I am deeply, deeply grateful. But beyond that, I’m thankful for the opportunity to broaden my understanding of and perspectives on what an economy ought to resemble to make it equitable and inspiring for everyone participating in it. Your lifelong dedication to enhancing our world is truly commendable. Thank you, and of course, a special thanks to my star co-host for making this show what it is. Reggie, over to you. Reggie Rucker: Thank you. Thank you, Luke. Thank you for that episode and really for grounding our work and community and in DC. David and Neil and Gil, thank you for your work in founding this institution we are grateful to be a part of. To you, our listeners, thank you for being on this journey with us. Whatever part of the last 50 years you’ve been with us, thank you for your partnership, your allyship on this journey. You are part of our community now, and we thank you. We’re going to continue this celebration, but we will be back again in two weeks with another story out of DC. In the meantime, check out the very special show notes from today’s episode to dive deeper into ILSR’s history and our relationship with DC. As always, you can visit ILSR.org for more on our work to fight corporate control and build local power. And we love getting your emails, so keep sending those to [email protected] to let us know what’s on your mind. This show is produced by Luke Gannon and me, Reggie Rucker. The podcast is edited by Luke Gannon and Taya Noel. The music for the season is also composed by Taya Noel. Thank you so much for listening to Building Local Power.

 

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Music Credit: Mattéa Overstreet

Photo Credit: Em McPhie, ILSR’s Digital Communications Manager

Podcast produced by Reggie Rucker and Luke Gannon

Podcast edited by Luke Gannon and Mattéa Overstreet

Copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.

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Born and raised in DC, Kehmari Norman established her flower shop to bridge culture and floristry. The visionary behind Black Flower Market drew from her background as a stage designer at Temple University,  transforming her skills into landscape design, and intertwining environmentalism with entrepreneurship. Throughout the episode, Kehmari highlights the significance of authenticity and cultivating connections rooted in one’s identity. She recognizes that “relationships are our best currency,” evident in her efforts to unite people through floristry workshops, farmers markets, and community events.

Related Resources

Black Flower Market 

Instagram: @blkflwrmrkt

First-ever BLK Market event showcases variety of Black-owned businesses in Richmond

This Washingtonian florist is giving bouquets to families of homicide victims

Book:

• Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler

Transcript

Reggie Rucker: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Building Local Power. I am your co-host, Reggie Rucker, back with my co-host Luke Gannon. What’s up, Luke? Luke Gannon: Hey, Reggie. Oh my God, it is great to be back and even greater to be spending this season in your neck of the woods. Reggie Rucker: So it’s funny that you say that because I actually still don’t feel quite right about calling DC home. I’ve been here for a few years now, but still I very much feel like a gentrifier. I just put it out there and actually, as you know, I just wrapped up my thesis on gentrification as looking at how small business lending is associated with gentrification. But that’s another topic for another day. Point is, I don’t think I can call it like my neck of the woods. I can’t call this place mine. Luke Gannon: Yeah, okay. I mean, that’s fair. When I usually ask you about home, you go straight to talking about Modesto, so I get that you feel that way, but I really need to read your thesis and we definitely got to have another conversation on this. Reggie Rucker: The good news is we do have an amazing lineup of shows ahead where we are getting to talk to folks from DC who have been doing work in this community for years to make it the special place that it is. It’s the community leaders, the advocates, activists, entrepreneurs, social and otherwise who have these really powerful stories about the drive to write DC’s next chapter. We think these stories will be illuminating in their own right, but as always, we hope that they also inspire you on your journey to build local power wherever you’re listening from. And with this episode, it was such a privilege to start this series with Kehmari Norman. She’s the founder of Black Flower Market, and if you’re in DC or the DC area, even if you’re not, follow her on Instagram immediately and we’ll put the links in the show notes. But this was special. Luke Gannon: As Reggie mentioned in our very first DC episode, we are talking about flowers, Black culture, and of course, DC. Today on the show, we are welcoming Kehmari Norman, who owns and operates the Black Flower Market, which is a flower shop in Washington DC that hosts pop-up shops and workshops, exploring medicinal and cultural context of florals. Here’s Kehmari. Kehmari Norman: My name is Kehmari. I’m the owner and founder of Black Flower Market, and I started my business in 2018. I’m born and raised in Washington DC and I started my career in environmentalism as a student at Temple University. Graduated from DC Public Schools in 2011, I’ve always been a scholar and an excellent student Since daycare. I’m the first college graduate in my immediate family. I wasn’t interested in taking an easy route for my life. I’m a fourth generation Washingtonian, and so DC is very near to my identity and my family’s identity. I didn’t need to create a reason to want to give back or come back or to love the city. The city is very much a part of me and my upbringing. I graduated from Temple University in 2015 with a degree in theater and concentration in set design, and most of my experience as a college student was not in theaters or in stage arenas, but predominantly in green spaces where I’d activate my design skills and place them into gardens or cityscapes, for example. And that trajectory led me to an internship with the Smithsonian’s Horticulture division, and that was my reintroduction back home in 2016. Luke Gannon: Kehmari developed her relationship with flowers through environmentalism while attending Temple University in Philadelphia. Kehmari Norman: As a sophomore at Temple University, a friend of mine had introduced to me his non-profit concepts and ideas. He started a profit called Philly Urban Creators, which is still in existence today. And at that sound stage of the organization, the goal was to communicate and react to or respond to gentrification and demolition in Philadelphia and North Philadelphia primarily. And we offered a space for me to manage. We were pretty much strangers at that point, but the energy was felt. I was a part of a Black philosophy club as a student at Temple, and we were relatively organized, so much so that we caught the attention of Alex, and initially he offered all of us, the Black philosophy group, a garden space for us to collectively manage. I was the only one of the group that took him up on the invitation, and at that point, I didn’t have any gardening, floristry or farming skills, but I have been a designer for quite some time, and so I took on the project to design the space through a landscaping and agricultural perspective. Philadelphia, North Philly is a town of row homes, and so the image throughout North Philly was like these gaps in neighborhoods where a house would be demolished due to renovation or gentrification or something. So our goal was to transform those gaps that ultimately became landfill spaces and transformed them into green oases and just practicing design skills and activating this space ultimately had to learn how to take care of it after designing it and activating it with community events and festivals and people. So I initially grew and I still do grow produce primarily, and through the act of cultivating crops and land stewardship, I gained mentors and a world of perspective about careers in environmentalism and floristry found me with my internship at the Smithsonian. One of my mentors, he created and curated the flowers for the Freer Gallery and other Smithsonian museums. And so as a mentee, I would go with him almost every day, 4:00 A.M., 5:00 AM in the floral home shops and just learning the basics through shadowing. Through that like revelation and that experience, I decided to start my own floral design business. Luke Gannon: Floristry found Kehmari and her passion had a ripple effect where she built relationships with people who were following their dreams, creating health and wellness by and for Black people. Kehmari Norman: Relationships are everyone’s strongest currency. For me personally, it was about staying true to myself and what I want, not necessarily aiming to do it all or be everything to everyone. So for example, I know my strengths, and I know coming back to DC that one of my strengths was the community that I’ve developed in Philadelphia as a Black gardener, as a Black land steward. Just going back to Philadelphia, I just knew what I wanted and I know what I was extremely passionate about. So even before Alex Epstein, the founder of Philly Urban Creators, before he offered the opportunity to manage a space, a garden space, or a lot rather, at that point, I was already in a space of health and wellness from an African perspective and the Pan African perspective. So all my life, I’ve been an avid reader, and at that point in time, I was incredibly inspired by herbalists and activists like Dr. Sabie, a friend of mine, his older sister, was studying under Dr. Sabie in Miami, and just the powerful influence of herbs, policy and culture, I was enamored in it all. And so I knew even as a student studying theater and not necessarily knowing where my life would turn out, I knew what I liked and so when an opportunity was brought to me to start a garden, I just found it a blessing and yeah, a true blessing for me to act on some of my interests. So while I was reading and researching herbalists, I could actually put the things that I was researching into play and do it myself. I knew my strengths, I knew what I wanted to do, and that helped me to identify other people who also knew their own strengths and know what they wanted to do. So we’re not aiming to do it all, but we’re just doing what we like in this space together. Luke Gannon: One of Kehmari’s missions is to bridge the gap between culture and flora culture. One of the ways she actualizes this is in the Smudge Stick Workshops she holds. Kehmari Norman: Bridging the gap between people’s culture and flora culture is actualized in the business through experiences and engagements, but ultimately what I mean by that saying by bridging people’s culture and flora culture is to allow us to see ourselves as a community through the things that we use and the things that we do. So for example, in the Smudge Stick lab, which is a offering that I host, there’s a space where we just talk with one another and folks get to understand and learn that while they may seem like polar opposites, whether it’s via age or the way they look or income or whatever, different binaries, no matter how seemingly opposite they can be, they’ll tell a story about how their grandmothers used basil for something in particular, or their parents used a certain herb or flower for specific ailments, and it allows a cultural immersion and a meeting of the minds and essentially for folks to let their shoulders down and see more commonalities than differences. I grew up in a space where Black success was really normalized. It wasn’t like the exception or something outstanding. It was really the culture. So growing up, my orthodontists, my dentists, my doctors, policymakers, all of these people were Black. And so I guess when I came back home in 2016 to DC, it was like this phenomenon of Black Lives Matter and all of this social stuff happening that platform Black people. And it was just like, “Oh, okay. Now the world is catching up”, because this is just our life or the life of those who lived in DC in the nineties and prior. There’s lots of culture in the District of Columbia and my role and my colleague’s role, what we want to do is just maintain a sense of chocolate city. So everything that I do has a race-first perspective. Luke Gannon: Kehmari has been cultivating spaces with a focus on horticulture and floristry for over 10 years. She’s faced some personal challenges in the process. Kehmari Norman: My personal challenges has been just learning the ropes, honestly. Again, I’m a first generation college graduate and first-time entrepreneur in my family, and so a lot of things that I just don’t know and learning as I go and lending, like loans and things from financial institutions, honestly, just the basics of financial entrepreneurship, well, the basics in finances within entrepreneurship and time management. Again, I just can’t emphasize enough the nuances of being a first-time college graduate, and a lot of spaces, a rare high school graduate in my family. And so that has been a personal challenge for me. Luke Gannon: Every day, Kehmari is reminded of why she loves the work she is doing. Kehmari Norman: I’m a servant to my community. I have a full-time job where I create environmental events throughout the district. So I may be teaching young people how to grow their own food or just simply holding a conversation with a peer of mine, holding a safe space to not code switch or to just simply be. Those are the moments where I can identify with that sentiment. True self-reliance is being a servant to your community, having a conversation with your communities of a super grassroots perspective and energy, how can you be of service? And that doesn’t mean how can you give money or give anything outside of who you are. Maybe tapping into your strengths. I know what I’m good at. Luke Gannon: Here’s Kehmari’s incredible book recommendation. Kehmari Norman: I would suggest Octavia Butler’s Blood Child. It’s an anthology of short stories, and it’s essentially a great book of advice. Luke Gannon: Thank you, Kehmari, for being on the show and for sharing your work, knowledge and love with DC and beyond. Please do check out Kehmari’s Instagram located in the show notes. Reggie Rucker: Luke, thank you and great job bringing us this story. As always, Kehmari, I was trying to avoid this all episode, but it is really fitting. You are so beautifully rooted and grounded in who you are and what you want for yourself and your community. I really just want to thank you for sharing that presence with us. And thanks to all of you, our listeners for tuning in. We’ll be back again in two weeks with another episode out of DC, the 51st State. But in the meantime, check out the show notes from today’s episode to dive deeper into what we discussed today. And as always, you can visit ilsr.org for more on our work to fight corporate control and build local power. And our emails are always open, [email protected]. Let us know what’s on your mind. Maybe it’s a future city we should consider going to, who else we should talk to in DC or elsewhere. We’d love to hear from you. This show is produced by Luke Gannon and me, Reggie Rucker. The podcast is edited by Luke Gannon and Taya Noel. The music for the season is also composed by Taya Noel. Thank you so much for listening to Building Local Power.

 

If you want your city to be a focus in an upcoming season, send an email to [email protected].

Like this episode? Please help us reach a wider audience by sharing Building Local Power with your family and friends. We would love your feedback. Please email [email protected]. Subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice.

 

Subscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Android Apps | RSS

 

Music Credit: Mattéa Overstreet

Photo Credit: Em McPhie, ILSR’s Digital Communications Manager

Podcast produced by Reggie Rucker and Luke Gannon

Podcast edited by Luke Gannon and Mattéa Overstreet

Copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.

Follow the Institute for Local Self-Reliance on Twitter and Facebook and, for monthly updates on our work, sign-up for our ILSR general newsletter.

In the heart of Detroit, a movement is underway to rebuild democracy and economic power from the ground up. The Detroit Community Wealth Fund sits at the epicenter of this movement, providing non-extractive capital and technical assistance that empowers local businesses and cooperatives. Co-founder Margo Dalal and director of community programming Rosie DeSantis joined Building Local Power to discuss their approach to fostering solidarity, building community wealth, and reshaping their economy by starting with what’s best for the people of Detroit rather than corporate shareholders.

Related Resources

Detroit Community Wealth Fund

Cooperative Economic Network of Detroit 

Detroit Community Wealth Fund on Non-Extractive Financing 

Books (these are free, you can read them today):

• The Jackson-Kush Plan: The Struggle for Black Self-Determination and Economic Democracy by Kali Akuno
• Community, Democracy, and Mutual Aid: Toward Dual Power and Beyond by John Michael Colón, Mason Herson-Hord, Katie S. Horvath,
  Dayton Martindale, & Matthew Porges

Transcript

Rosie DeSantis: So when I say deep democracy, we’re not talking about representational democracy, we’re not talking about a thousand people needing to reach one person in order for a single thing to maybe kind of change eventually. I’m talking about democratic modality, where the resources and the things that affect the life of a community they have direct control over. Reggie Rucker: Hello and welcome back to the final installment of Building Local Power: Detroit, our first stop in a multi-city series where we explore how to build local power from the experiences of people who are doing just that on the ground in their respective cities. I’m here as always with my co-host, Luke Gannon, and as all of you know by now, Luke is the real star of the show, I’m just the supporting talent. But Luke, I got to say, after spending the last couple of months getting to talk to these community leaders and advocates, activists and social entrepreneurs, all who have these really powerful stories about the drive to write Detroit’s next chapter, I feel bonded to Detroit in a way, and really, it makes me a little emotional. I’m kind of sad to leave. Luke Gannon: Reggie, yep, I’m playing it for you. Reggie Rucker: Luke, you are the best. But seriously, I know you’re probably tired of hearing me talk about my hometown, Modesto. We built this whole glorious Modesto campaign around, but talking to all of these really passionate, dedicated, smart folks in Detroit, it really gives me all of those glorious vibes. Luke Gannon: Oh, yes, truly. I am with you, Reggie. I am seriously a little sad to leave, but before we do, we have a fabulous final Detroit episode lined up for you. Today on the show, we are joined by two phenomenal people from the Detroit Community Wealth Fund, co-founder and senior fellow Margo Dalal, and Rosie DeSantis, the director of community programming. The Detroit Community Wealth Fund fosters, educates and finances democratic and cooperative businesses by providing technical assistance, trainings and implementing resource networks to put power in the hands of the workers and communities. Reggie Rucker: That’s great, Luke. And we think these stories will, as always, be illuminating in their own right, but I hope that they also inspire you on your journey to build local power wherever you’re listening from. Luke Gannon: Let’s dive in. Here’s Margo. Margo Dalal: I live in Detroit and I’ve lived here for just over 10 years now. And I moved to Detroit from Massachusetts where I was in school, and I was really interested in entrepreneurship and worker ownership and what was happening in Detroit in 2013 when the city filed for bankruptcy. So I ended up moving here while I was in school and then staying. I grew up in Northern Virginia and went to high school in DC and love that part of the country. My dad is an immigrant from India and he started a business. I was in maybe sixth grade when he started his business. My uncle started a business and they’ve always been quite entrepreneurial and kind of financially focused. And then my mom is kind of like a renaissance woman and she can do just about anything and then will start a business doing that. So whether it’s sewing or baking or crafting of any kind, she has a pretty successful ceramics business now.   So just that was a huge part of my childhood of playing business and seeing my parents do that. I also grew up in a part of Virginia that had a lot of small businesses. I was lucky to see that, and my friends’ parents own small businesses, so that’s always been part of my life. And when I was in school, you get awakened to the problems of capitalism and also alternatives like worker-owned businesses. Those things, I think, resonated with me a lot. I have lots of other interests of course, but to me, it made a lot of sense to think about alternative forms of financing that included community in the decision-making process, and then ultimately serves community-owned businesses. Luke Gannon: While Margot eventually found her way to Detroit and called it home, Rosie was born and raised there. Here’s Rosie. Rosie DeSantis: I was born and raised on the east side. I’ve been here my whole life except for college. Essentially, the east side in contrast to the west side, a particular area where I’m from, there’s just these swabs and swaths of vacant land. But at times, you walk down a certain block and it feels like you’re growing up in the countryside. On the other hand, it’s just normal to have an entire block of burnt down bungalows, and I don’t like painting that picture because of the way that it feeds into ruin porn or whatever. It was facts. And so that’s really what it looks like.   What folks are very good at in Detroit is making things by and for themselves with whatever tools that they have and making it special and making it meaningful to them and their neighbors. So I think very early on, what I witnessed in terms of that reclamation of agency is squatting on land, and just creating these little corners of the world that really mean something to people. These little almost handmade parks or little movie screening places or assembled gyms outside. Using their houses as little community centers and block clubs, folks in Detroit love a block club more than anywhere I’ve ever seen. And so I witnessed a lot growing up with people finding ways to prioritize their own vision for their neighborhood, whether or not they were given the power to actually enact it, but they used the tools that they had to enact that with the space that they were surrounded by. The land that we were surrounded by provided a particular opportunity for that.   I was raised around a lot of community planning, community visioning happenings, processes, and my mom founded a nonprofit. And what she kind of hammered into me with the way that she wanted this thing to move was a very simple idea that people deserve to be and are the experts of their own experience and deserve to have control over the resources and the situations that affect their neighborhoods and their lives and communities, which unfortunately, is kind of a radical idea. And so I was really raised seeing how these community planning processes facilitated this kind of agency that I got really obsessed with as I became an adult. And also having had some experiences of witnessing that agency being ignored or limited and also seeing how Detroiters are able to take it back in certain ways or build it for themselves has always really inspired me. Yeah, that’s kind of been really the theme of my life and my organizing and what brought me into the Wealth Fund. Luke Gannon: In 2016, Margo met the three other co-founders of what would become the Detroit Community Wealth Fund. At the same time, there was an emerging network of organizations that formed the Seed Commons, which, as Margo details, is now a national organization that finances cooperatives all over the US. Margo Dalal: Detroit Community Wealth Fund was started to become a member of the Seed Commons and do the type of place-based lending and cooperative development that all organizations with Seed Commons do. So we started to do that type of lending and work in Detroit, and since 2016, we’ve grown our organization. It was a really perfect fit for me. I was interested in doing work with businesses, but not in the typical kind of capitalist way. And I saw that having actual real consequences for Detroit. And so thinking about how we can do economics differently in a way that’s actually serving Detroiters and as built by Detroiters who are primarily black and primarily low income, that felt important to me. So it was really a gift to be able to do the work of the Detroit Community Wealth Fund. And now to see where that’s gone and share it others is really exciting. Luke Gannon: Detroit has always epitomized the spirit of people power. Detroiters recognize that they must create solutions for the people and by the people. Margo Dalal: There’s a culture of getting things done in Detroit by Detroiters for a long time, and that has often been because there weren’t services, there weren’t resources that were available. And so there is this culture of cooperation, of working together, of meeting the need. 2013, when the city filed for bankruptcy, prior and after that, there was a long period of assessing how that was going to play out in the city. Since 2013, there’s so much that has changed and some that hasn’t changed. I think it really became obvious what parts of the city were going to be benefiting from further investment and from attention, what parts were not. There were entire city plans that decided on which neighborhoods were going to exist and which might not exist. I guarantee you that was not necessarily a conversation that included those residents.   And so I think for something like the Detroit Community Wealth Fund, and again, what the Wealth Fund is doing, the role that this organization is playing, I say it’s helping to add economic value to the skills that Detroiters already have. Detroiters already have skills, they already have resources, but how can we add economic value to those? And that means how can we create living wages? How can we create profit that the community owns, and then how can we do it in a way that is not extractive? Which if you know anything about Detroit in the last 10 years, you know that there has been one out of four homes has been foreclosed on and tax foreclosure. This was illegal. This was an illegal thing that should never have happened. And why did that happen, right? Because there was a financial system that benefited from it in many different ways.   And so we can’t use that same financial system to build back businesses, especially businesses that we want to be owned and controlled by the community who would’ve never let this happen in the first place. And so those are, I think, the two roles that DCWF is playing. How can we do financing in an ethical and non-extractive way that doesn’t ever leave community worse off? And also, how can we build back businesses that are owned by the community and have the community’s interests first and foremost? How are we building businesses that are rooted in specific neighborhoods and communities in Detroit? Luke Gannon: The Detroit Community Wealth Fund provides non-extractive capital to finance worker cooperatives. Banks provide loans with the condition of minimizing their risk, essentially, meaning that one needs existing wealth to acquire more. Margo Dalal: So if you wanted to start a business, you would go to the bank, you say, “I want $100,000.” And they’d say, “Okay, cool. What is the collateral? What are you putting up that if we can’t get our $100,000 back, what are you going to give us?” And that means that you have to have some kind of asset to begin with. You might need to have a home. It’s often property. You might need to have cash in your bank account. That’s the first thing that you have to do. If you fail or even before you fail, if you’re not making money in the first few months, or maybe the first year, you still owe on that loan, you have to pay every month, regardless of if you’re making money, regardless of if you can feed yourself. If you fail, now, whatever you owe, the bank is going to come and take assets from you in order to make good on the loan that they gave you.   That’s extractive, right? We’ve seen that play out in all sorts of ways. That’s damaging, right? And there’s a whole bunch of complicated ways that that has been played out. Another way that capital is extractive is if you can’t get a loan from your bank, you might go and take out a few credit cards that allow you to rack up tens of thousands of dollars of debt. And if you’re not paying every month, you’re probably paying 15%, 20%, 25%, sometimes even 50% or more on your interest. Same thing with a payday loan, right? You cannot afford something. The payday advance. You are sometimes paying 100% or more of that amount of money just to get it for a week or a few days. That is how capital maintains itself, and that’s how normal people are totally exploited for essentially not having resources. We all know that that is incredibly problematic on so many levels, and this gets even more complicated when you think about the housing crisis and all these other larger systems.   Non-extractive capital is doing, and Seed Commons coined this, it is fortunately increasing in popularity, and I think there are different ways that you might be able to do this, but the way that the Seed Commons and the way that the Detroit Community Wealth Fund does it is there’s a few things that contribute towards non-extractive. One is that we’re not taking collateral. So immediately, our capital is accessible to people that don’t have historical wealth. The second is that we only require repayment when profit is made after living wages are made. So it’s sustainable. You don’t owe money the first month. You might not owe money the first year unless you’re breaking even. The repayment is a percentage of profit. So that means the business needs to be doing well and needs to be sustainable before we, as the lender, are even successful ourselves. And then the third part is that we understand that it is really hard to run businesses, and that requires a tremendous amount of technical assistance.   It’s impossible for one person or even a group of people to run a business on their own. So we provide ongoing assistance for the businesses that we work with. If pivots are necessary, if changes to the business plan are necessary, often if there are interpersonal issues, it’s just a really hard thing to do, and we provide free ongoing technical assistance until a loan is repaid. So those are the three I think big things. If a loan fails, no one is personally responsible for that loan. If a business closes, and that happens, that does happen, we’re not ever going after assets that aren’t secured as part of the loan that we have provided. Luke Gannon: Rosie facilitates the Cooperative Economic Network of Detroit, which is a platform for co-ops to come together and share resources and create community and economic partnerships. Rosie DeSantis: It’s just a platform for them to support one another as well as build up these solid tangible partnerships towards the creation of a larger cooperative ecosystem. One of the main aspects of this program is they pay member dues, and those dues go into a large fund that we have that’s also supported by outside funding. But these dues go into that fund, and folks can ask to withdraw from that pooled money for anything that they need, up to $800 twice a year. And essentially, it’s all democratic, so any withdrawal that’s requested has to be voted on by the rest of the membership. We call it the Member Solidarity Fund. And yeah, there are a lot of different aspects of this program, but essentially, it was created to try to build up an insular cooperative economy that right now, is less the focus. So much is the relationships that need to be built between these folks, between the membership in order to do this sort of deep work, this deep organizing.   So right now, particularly in this phase of it, we’re really focused on getting them to connect with one another and fleshing out what types of partnerships, how can they meet each other’s needs in this solid way? Who’s sourcing what from who? Who’s taking on what project with who, for what? There are 11 members right now, and a lot of these folks come to us. A lot of folks become members in order to get support with their transition into becoming a co-op. We also don’t just accept co-ops. Basically, requirement for membership is that there is some sort of pooling of resources, sharing of resources within your organization, and you run democratically, or if you need support with your democratic processes and structure, that’s why you’re getting into the network. And so there are a lot of smaller projects that aren’t so much like businesses, but are more focused on building out democracy within their respective community, some piece of sharing of resources, which might be as small as a tool library. We offer workshops that are exclusive to our membership. Luke Gannon: While Rosie has built the Cooperative Economic Network, they have faced one big challenge. Rosie DeSantis: The biggest thing is just folks’ capacity. Asking folks to get together to do anything is a challenge when these folks are really dealing with limited resources in many ways. And so it’s like we’re trying to support them connecting, and then our capacity, because I run this program by myself, we’re trying to both facilitate these connections while also offering this ongoing technical assistance towards their transition while also doing these workshops. So it’s just a lot, but I would say that and because we’re stressing the relationship building so much, almost all of our events and stuff are in person, and that’s deliberate and that’s a challenge. And otherwise, it’s really just supporting people through the earliest phases of them building out their governance and democratic processes and making sure that they stay on track with a work plan for that because it’s like if you’re not committed to that, then membership might not make sense to you.   So we’re really trying to think through what is it going to take to get folks aware of what’s being built right now? One thing that we’re doing is free neighborhood workshops, essentially like food and childcare provided, and we’re going to talk to you about what a co-op is at the most essential level, and what is our vision for what a local self-reliant cooperative economy looks like. In terms of the members’ response, the biggest thing that I perceive is they’re just very excited to be with each other, just very excited about the connections that they are building, and I feel like it’s many times rarer than we think. Just people coming together based on shared values. Explicitly, that is why we’re here to fundamentally support each other because of that. Luke Gannon: Rosie has had multiple highlights throughout their experience working with cooperatives. Rosie DeSantis: The first one was when we did a version of our incubator program where essentially, a local nonprofit approached us after surveying their neighbors about what businesses they wanted to see, and a co-op was created out of that based on that, from folks involved in that area or living in that area. Challenges with that co-op, and they’re still developing, but just to know that this model is possible gave me just a lot of hope in terms of just how our programming and this model can be used to facilitate deep democracy and prioritizing the visions of Detroiters for themselves. So when I say deep democracy, we’re not talking about representation of democracy, we’re not talking about 1,000 people needing to reach one person in order for a single thing to maybe kind of change eventually. I’m talking about a democratic modality or whatever where the resources and the things that affect the life of a community they have direct control over.

 

If you want your city to be a focus in an upcoming season, send an email to [email protected].

Like this episode? Please help us reach a wider audience by sharing Building Local Power with your family and friends. We would love your feedback. Please email [email protected]. Subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice.

 

Subscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Android Apps | RSS

 

Music Credit: Mattéa Overstreet

Photo Credit: Em McPhie, ILSR’s Digital Communications Manager

Podcast produced by Reggie Rucker and Luke Gannon

Podcast edited by Luke Gannon and Mattéa Overstreet

Copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.

Follow the Institute for Local Self-Reliance on Twitter and Facebook and, for monthly updates on our work, sign-up for our ILSR general newsletter.

Mama Shu’s journey began with a profound commitment: healing her community. Despite the challenges faced by her hometown of Highland Park, Mama Shu felt a deep connection to the area. Determined to make a difference, she embarked on a mission to reclaim neglected spaces, tirelessly working to steward the land, organize the community, and secure resources for revitalization.

Today, Avalon Village owns 45 lots that have been transformed into vibrant community spaces, including gardens, parks, a homework house, markets, a cafe, an entrepreneurial hub, a healing space, and more. Yet, Mama Shu’s impact extends beyond physical infrastructure. Her holistic approach to community development embraces spiritual and cultural revitalization, honoring and celebrating her departed loved ones while nurturing a loving space for future generations.

Avalon Village stands as a testament to the resilience of communities and the transformative power of collective action.

Related Resources

Check out: Avalon Village 

• If you live in Detroit, they have lots of upcoming events!

From Blight to Beauty | Shamayim Harris | TEDxDetroit

CNN Heroes Tribute: Mama Shu

Highland Park’s ‘Mama Shu’ is among USA Today’s 2024 Women of the Year

Ellen Meets The Amazing Mama Shu

Mama Shu Interview with Roadtrip Nation

Mama Shu’s Book Recommendation:

• Sacred Woman: A Guide to Healing the Feminine Body, Mind, and Spirit by Queen Afua

Transcript

Mama Shu: My job as a feminine entity on this planet is going to help to heal it, help to bring it back into balance, I would say. And so that is what my work is about, is about to helping to bring things back into balance. Sometimes it’s the feminine touch or whatever sometimes that’s missing in things and that right there. And so I believe that Highland Park, I believe that Avalon Village is a place that is being healed. Reggie Rucker: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Building Local Power Detroit, our first stop in a multi-city series where we explore how to build local power from the experiences of people who are doing just that on the ground in their respective cities. If you’re just jumping into the series midway, these are the people who are proving what’s possible when a community comes together to shape its future. We talk to community leaders, advocates, activists, entrepreneurs, and elected officials, all who have powerful stories about the drive to write Detroit’s next chapter. We think these stories will be illuminating in their own right, but we also hope they inspire you on your journey to build local power wherever you’re listening from. So excited as always to do this tour with my co-host, Luke Gannon. What’s up, Luke? Luke Gannon: Hey, Reggie. I am so excited to be here. We have quite a special guest today. Shamayim Harris, or Mama Shu, was named USA Today’s 2024 Women of the Year. Mama Shu was also on The Ellen Show and was given a house from Ellen. Yep, you heard me. More on that later. And was named CNN Hero in 2023, and was introduced at their 17th year Heroes event by Sterling K. Brown. Yeah, it’s crazy. And now she’s talking on our podcast. Reggie Rucker: I know, right? When I saw the Sterling K. Brown clip, that just blew me away. I immediately went into fanboy territory. And it’s funny, because she talked about Avalon Village being infectious, like those ideas and that vision being infectious, but honestly, I’m going to take it a step further and talk like, it’s her, like she’s infectious. Sitting here listening to her, and I was thinking, like, “Mama Shu, what are you doing this weekend?” Or, “Where are you going to be?” Because that’s what I’m doing. That’s where I want to be. Right? Luke Gannon: I know, seriously. I’m practically ready to head over to Avalon Village to meet Mama Shu in person. Reggie Rucker: It’s just really incredible. I took away so much from Mama Shu’s story, but one certainly is this idea that we all want the same thing. So when she was building her vision, she knew it wasn’t hers alone. We all want and deserve beautiful spaces and safe spaces and healing spaces, spaces we can learn and find joy and all of these things. We are one in that regard. And that’s what creates the shared humanity, which is the foundation that we can build anything on, including this beautiful village. Luke Gannon: So after decades of stewarding the land, keeping it clean, organizing community, buying property, designing lots, Mama Shu has literally built a village. Let’s hear how she did it. Mama Shu: My name is Mama Shu. I’m the founder and CEO of Avalon Village, and I’m just over here building a eco village. We’re transforming blight to beauty, and we’re in the city of Highland Park, which is 2.9 miles, and it’s a small suburb inside of Detroit, Michigan. The population is close to 10,000. We’re just basically making things better and better here in the community out of distress or something that was distressed before, because we believe that we deserve to live in a beautiful environment and grow up in a beautiful environment, and grow our families up and prosper in a clean, healthy, and safe environment. My relationship to Detroit was, well, I was born in Highland Park, actually, and as a little girl, we moved on, a baby, actually. My family, we moved to Detroit, which is almost right across the street, because it’s just so close and everything. So grew up on the east side of Detroit, actually Field Street between Palmer and Medbury. And grew up over there and went to Rose Elementary School, graduated from Kettering High School in Detroit. And just grew up on Field Street as a young person, and just loved my neighborhood. I was always fascinated by the neighborhood and would walk my block and visit the elders and just do stuff, and sell Avon and Tupperware and everything. I hustled on that block in my neighborhood. All of the most beautiful comfortable things happen on that block. So yeah, I love building neighborhoods, because I believe that neighborhoods are foundations for family and for growth, for spiritual growth, mental growth, all of that. That’s like the beginnings to me. And if the neighborhoods are not together, if they’re neglected and full of blight and just all kinds of things going on, it’s hard to grow. And I see other beautiful spaces like downtown, it’s just looking real beautiful. But I think that the neighborhoods, to bring these neighborhoods up to be able to create a community that we want. So that’s like my mission, is to basically transform blight to beauty just on this block here in Highland Park, Michigan. I felt that I could just take that little chunk and try to do what I can. And sometimes I think that’s crazy or whatever, and they’re like, “What the heck are you doing?” But it’s turning out good. Luke Gannon: In 2007 and 2008, Mama Shu would drive past what is now Avalon Street and see the neglected streets, mattresses strewn about, dumpsters and homes, boarded homes and broken down cars. Yet Highland Park was Mama Shu’s home, so she embarked on a journey to turn blight into beauty. Mama Shu: I’m a minister too of 21 plus years as well, and I was like, “I’m going to go over there on that block and fix up my ministry and put my ministry in the house that I’m in right now.” And I said, “And then I’m going to go ahead and clean up the block and I’m going to build the village.” It’s because I wanted a beautiful space to live in, but I didn’t want to move. I wanted to stay where I was. And I felt that this is something that we can do. We can clean it up and we can get it in order. And so I would just drive past the street every day. And then six months after my Jakobi, he was two years, one month and six-days-old, he got killed in a hit-and-run accident. And then I’m driving to my school job, okay, driving to my school job, and something said, “Just go down the block.” And I saw a dumpster in the driveway of this house that I’m sitting in right now, and I saw a dumpster. I said, “Wow.” I said, “Okay, this house is for sale.” I saw a For Sale sign in the window. And then I just decided to let me just call and get on this block, get over here, put my ministry on this block and get to work. And ended up buying this house for 3,000 bucks and started fixing it up and stayed in it when it was boarded up. And I always say that some people look for a beautiful place, and I just want to create. We can create a place and make it beautiful. That’s basically what it is. We don’t have to run away. A lot of people leave and they go to other towns and everything, but I wanted to stay. I really did. I’m like, “You know what? This is cool. This is a block. It’s only 2.9 miles. We can really do and grow and make things better in this city as a whole.” And my goal was to fix this house up and also to build Jakobi Ra Park, which is the very first entities, the name of my nonprofit. The first one is the Moon Ministry, and then we built the park simultaneously. I was born here in Highland Park, so I’m really proud of where I was born. This is my city. Hey, we fall down on hard times. There is places like this everywhere in all different kinds of states. And so I just wanted to begin to just initiate some beauty, and how we can transform and how we can revive the space, in hopes that it will spread and be infectious and catch on and actually help the rest of the city grow and maybe see possibilities, different possibilities. Luke Gannon: In 2010 and 2011, Highland Park was grappling with challenging economic circumstances. Schools were shuttering, financial hardships loomed large, and essential infrastructure was being neglected. But Mama Shu recognized the potential for change. She decided to bridge the gaps. Mama Shu: So I just wanted to make this place a better and more desirable to live in, and so I figured the very first entity was The Homework House. Why? Because when you move into a new city or a new town or a new village, people look for a place to raise their children, to be able to nurture their children, and you got to have spaces where you have children being taken care of. It’s just a natural thing. And so when you got a place where the schools are being torn down, I just have a problem with that. And so I just like, okay, so that to me, made the most sense. Luke Gannon: Jakobi Ra Park and The Homework House were two of the first entities Mama Shu brought to fruition. Today, Avalon Village makes up 95% of the entire block, but it took years of hard work, dedication, and community organizing to get to this point. Mama Shu: A lot of my visions comes from what I envision for myself, what’s going to make myself what I feel that I deserve in the neighborhood. I believe that I should have eclectic coffee shops and a nice park to sit in and a space to put my dog in a dog park and get training lessons in there, and a spot where you can have ice cream, and somewhere where you can party at and the children can learn. So I just envisioned those things for myself first, and then I knew that other people wanted the same thing. And so I’m no urban planner as far as like I don’t have a degree or anything in that. Most of it came intuitively and organically. You just know what to put, you know what’s missing, and I know what used to be here, and I just had to do it in a way that was economically feasible and that I could actually do it. So how I even started buying the lots, I sold fish sandwiches for $5. Yep, I sold fish sandwiches. I used my own work money from my school job, my income tax check. That’s how I bought this house. My sister friend gave me $1,500. I used… My income tax check had came in the mail. I was so excited about that. And then I used my work check and I patched it together. So this process takes a little more time, because if you don’t have the whole big giant funding to do it, but at the same time, I really love this process too. So it was just started off of selling fish sandwiches, just chipping my own money together. I did get a donation from the Big Sun Foundation. That was where the big chunk of the seed money came, to like, okay, I’m getting ready to build the village. Let’s get this started so we can get the Kickstarter started to actually initiate the build. It was all of that. Just gathering up a bunch of activists and folks that I know, construction workers and my civil engineer friends, and like, “Okay, y’all, we going to do this.” There was eight years or so that I just basically cleaned up the block first. So really, I just took stewardship of the land, and I didn’t own it yet. We just helped, did our part as citizens. Well, I don’t want to sit in the trash. I don’t want to look at it, and so I cleaned up a lot almost every year. The guys from over here at the shelter across the street here off of Woodward Avenue, and then I was in the school system, so a lot of my students and stuff, “Hey, you want to earn community service hours? Come on over here, help Mama Shu clean up, because we building a village over here. We’re going to make it better.” So it was little things. What I did was embedded our energy into it, in the soil, and cleaned it up and all the glass, and it was just, well, the houses were torn down, but sometimes some of the debris was still stuck in this. It was like that took actually some years to do that. And then started buying the property, I’m going to say, in like 2016, 2017, really like, okay, now here’s the deeds to it. So we own about 95% of this block now, about 45 properties over here, so we have space. We’re able to build what it is that we want to. The block that I’m on is slated as mixed use as it relates to the master plan in the city of Highland Park. And I didn’t know that either. That was like an organic thing too. I know I want to put a playground, I want to do this. I want to put The Homework House and the school and this and all of that, but didn’t know that that was possible. Because sometimes you just can’t sit and just build something on a residential, but it just so happens that all of my vision actually fit. I was in alignment with that just intuitively. Luke Gannon: After years of stewarding the land, Mama Shu started implementing her vision to give residents and neighbors the types of businesses, spaces, and education they deserved. Mama Shu: The Goddess Marketplace is… Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing. Actually, we’re working on the expansion this year. The Goddess Marketplace is an economic initiative for women entrepreneurs. And so what we’ve done is that it started off as pop-ups, a collective of pop-ups for women back in 2001. And I said, “Okay, we’re building a village. We’re going to start that and we’re going to put it in the shipping container.” And so we have two shipping containers, a 40-foot and a 20-foot that house the Goddess Marketplace. And it’s an open season marketplace. It starts in May and it ends in October. And women entrepreneurs are able to put out their tables, pop their tents and stuff around that time. And so that’s what the Goddess Marketplace is about, basically nurturing and supporting women businesses. And so we have that. And we also have another shop called the Whine and Tea Shop. It’s W-H-I-N-E. It was our 20-footer that we just got remodeled and everything. So that is just different wine tastings and wine swag, gifts and different things like that. So those are made out of shipping containers. Those are also ran by solar, so those are lit by solar, so there is nothing on the grid. So that’s one space. Also, we have the Imhotep STEM Lab or STEAM Lab, and it is another shipping container that was remodeled for the children to learn science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics in. And it’s beautiful. It has a beautiful mural on it. We like to use a lot of local artists to paint and put vibrant colors on a lot of the things that we do. We were fortunate enough to be on The Ellen Show, and she donated a house that we have. And I had an option to live in it or use it as retail, but I’m like, “You know what? This is going to be The Village Hall.” Because every city has a city hall, village hall or a place of business. So I’m like, this is where we have our security offices on one side of it, and the other part is multipurpose for meetings and everything. So we have that. The Moon Ministry, the spiritual base is also the admin building as well. And we have Invincible Gardens, the My 3 Sunz Basketball Court, Jakobi Ra Park. Those are spaces that are dedicated to my ancestor sons, my sons that are ancestors now. The Invincible Garden is in memory of my Chinyelu. He was murdered in 2021, so it’s been three years. And so we built a beautiful garden with a gazebo. It’s a sign and it’s just Garden Diva here at the village. Yesterday she was in there getting everything ready, because there’s getting ready to be some beautiful flowers. So Chinyelu’s Garden is total flowers in his. Jakobi, we built the park. There’s a Starlight Amphitheater. His name is Jakobi Ra. The Egyptian god of the Sun, Ra, and Jakobi means stars. So we did something like a Starlight Amphitheater. So we have our concerts there. I marry people on that. It’s just a platform. It’s really nice. And so it’s all lit with solar lighting. So we have just so many parties and gatherings and stuff in the summer, in the spring, in the summer. So those are some of the entities that we had. We even changed our street sign too. We went and there was a resolution passed to change our street to Avalon Village. So when you roll up on us, whenever y’all come and just take a trip, you’ll see that we actually have the street sign changed. So that was just kind of cool to get that done. We have our own security team, what’s called the Avalon Village Peace Team. Police officers back in the day were called peace officers. And so our logo is basically we take our peace seriously, and we do. It’s just a village. And so we have all of those departments and everything economical. We even have a space called the Avalon Village Healing House, which is under construction now. And it is a space for holistic practitioners, Reiki therapists, doulas, all of that where you can come right in the neighborhood and receive holistic care. We’re going to build a cafe, the Blue Moon Cafe, with attached greenhouse and some holistic businesses. So that is our health and wellness phase that’s down there on the corner. So that’s how we got things kind of blocked off around here. Luke Gannon: Every part of Avalon Village is envisioned and built from love. Mama Shu’s departed sons are ancestral guardians who oversee the village. Over the years, most people embraced Mama Shu’s vision because of her consistency and commitment to bring positive change to the whole neighborhood. Mama Shu: If someone doesn’t understand or even just seek to understand what’s going on and how it’s happening and everything, that can be a limiting thing to them. I think that some people just openly embrace because they know they want change and they want to see something different, and they understand that somebody’s actually doing it. And usually it’s the ones that’s not really doing this that’s thinking the other. One of the things is that I stayed consistent and I was very serious and I didn’t change up, and that’s one thing that people need. They need consistency and they don’t need folks to change up and actually do. So those that actually see what’s going on, like, “Wow. Okay, okay.” This block right here, what you got to understand is this was one of the most notorious blocks in Highland Park, and so people are just really shocked. And I was actually spiritually drawn to it to actually do something. I didn’t know that it was this horrible block, but I’m over here, “Do-da-do, let me just… Oh, we going to plant flowers here. I’m going to do this and that.” Man, I learned the history of the block, and there was a lot of murders over here of young men, and my son was actually shot here. This place was a Phoenix coming from the ashes, and I know that, from what it used to be. And so I have a lot of guys that tell me, “You know what used to go on Avalon Street?” So there’s a lot of people who love and enjoy watching what actually happens, and are very supportive, are very consistent in their support. And some just kind of look by the wayside, and then they’ll come a little closer and everything. And if it’s for you, it’s for you. Luke Gannon: If you persist and follow the moral arc of the universe, others will follow your lead. Mama Shu’s unwavering self-belief inspired others to join the journey. Mama Shu: That’s all I did, really, just stuck to it and just kept going no matter what. I done buried children and everything, but this was important to me. I don’t even care what the obstacles are. The things that have happened in the journey throughout that, it’s like… You know, after losing the kids and stuff, it’s like, okay, then somebody going to say no? I don’t even worry about nothing like that because I don’t care. I just keep it moving. If somebody want to nay-say, or they want to sit up there and try to block and all of that? None of that, it just don’t work with me, that’s all. You’re going to draw the people who are really digging what you’re doing. Those are the ones that you want. You want the ones that’s going to dig in. And those other ones help to strengthen things too, because sometimes they can keep you on your toes. You’re not in alignment, you always get the folks that are in alignment what you’re doing, always. They always come, so you’re good. Luke Gannon: On the anniversary of Jakobi Ra’s passing, Mama Shu opened The Homework House. Mama Shu: One of the moments that really stands out to me, I’m going to say that it took me about five years plus to finish The Homework House. And so when I got that all finished, and I didn’t get that totally finished, y’all, until September 23rd when I did the ribbon cutting in 2022. And even though I still had lower hanging fruit projects to work, that was my main entity, so in my heart, that was really a big thing. Some beautiful magical moments and different things that just let me know, just indications that say you’re on the right track and I’m connecting and everything, and that’s important to me to accomplish and to get done, and like, “Wow, okay.” But I’m going to tell you one that’s kind of made me proud. The CNN Heroes did. But the USA Today Woman of the Year, that really kind of… I’m like, “Okay. I’m Woman of the Year.” Sometimes when I get awards and different things like that, it’s like, “Man, I’m just doing my work.” Local self-reliance means really being a solutionist, being able to solve the problems within an area that you think that you can actually do something about. When you make a commitment to a space, to a place, and you take charge and you start putting that in order. And somebody has to be the one that’s in charge or the one that they’re going to throw the tomatoes at, build you a nice team. You know how that goes and all of that. But I say take charge and do things consistently. Consistency is the key. Keep doing it over and over again and show people that you are actually there for the long haul, and be real intentional. And I think that once you do that, and really it all boils down to you just got to do the work to make sure that that happens, to be able to be empowered locally. Do the work. Do what it is that you say you’re going to do, and just keep doing it, and keep growing and organize, organize, organize. Luke Gannon: Developing solutions that are both by and for the community embodies the very essence of local self-reliance. Mama Shu has spearheaded the creation of a village complete with parks, businesses, organizations, and communal spaces that foster peace and prosperity for its residents. She has transformed blight into beauty. Mama Shu: There’s this sister, her name is Queen Afua, and she has a book called The Sacred Woman. But basically it was a process in this book to really help to build that I was able to use. It was a tool to be able to help to build myself spiritually, physically, how to eat right. To be able to, I guess, arm myself with what I needed and what I need for my work and to live a beautiful life. It’s some practical things. Different teas, exercise and everything. And I went through this book, it’s like nine sections of it, and I’ve went through it several times, just going through it and just getting tighter. So I really love it, because I know and I believe that my job as a feminine entity on this planet is going to help to heal it and help to bring it back into balance, I would say. And so that is what my work is about, is about to helping to things back into balance. Sometimes it’s the feminine touch or whatever sometimes that’s missing in things, and that right there. And so I believe that Highland Park, I believe that Avalon Village is a place that is being healed. Luke Gannon: Mama Shu, thank you so much for sharing your story with us on the show today. Reggie Rucker: Luke, great job. Thank you for bringing us this story. And Mama Shu, look. I have a trip to Paris coming up in a couple of months, and for as excited as I am for that real talk, I cannot wait to get to Highland Park and to come visit Avalon Village. Thank you for your infectious optimism and joy and persistence and vision. This was truly, truly, truly a blessing. And thanks to all of you, our listeners, for tuning in. We’ll be back again in two weeks with another story out of Detroit. But in the meantime, check out the show notes from today’s episode to dive deeper into today’s discussion. And as always, you can visit ilsr.org for more on our work to fight corporate control and build local power. And we always welcome emails to [email protected]. Let us know what’s on your mind. This show is produced by Luke Gannon and me, Reggie Rucker. The podcast is edited by Luke Gannon and Tea Noelle. The music for this season is also composed by Tea Noelle. Thank you so much for listening to Building Local Power.

 

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Music Credit: Mattéa Overstreet

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Podcast produced by Reggie Rucker and Luke Gannon

Podcast edited by Luke Gannon and Mattéa Overstreet

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Reneé’s journey began with a simple idea: composting isn’t just about reducing waste — it’s about building communities. Reneé V. Wallace, executive director at FoodPLUS Detroit, empowers Detroiters to drive systemic change within themselves, their homes, and throughout their community. Through innovative pilot projects like banding neighbors together to utilize alleys for community projects, partnering with farmers’ markets to pick up wasted food, and creating compost systems at universities to build bridges between farmers and students, Reneé is revolutionizing how we think about sustainability. By fostering collaboration and community engagement, Reneé is not only transforming Detroit’s economy but also nurturing a more resilient and sustainable future for all.

Related Resources

FoodPLUS Detroit

Compost Pilot Program at Wayne State University 

Detroit City Council Green Task Force Organics Recycling Program 

The Stewardship Network: Reneé V. Wallace

Georgia Street Community Collective Farm 

Transcript

Reggie Rucker: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Building Local Power Detroit, our first stop in a multi-city series where we explore how to build local power from the experiences of people who are doing just that on the ground in their respective cities. These are the people who are proving what’s possible when a community comes together to shape its future. We’ll talk to community leaders, advocates, activists, entrepreneurs, and elected officials, all who have powerful stories about the drive to write Detroit’s next chapter. We think these stories will be illuminating in their own right, but we hope they’ll also inspire you on your journey to build local power wherever you’re listening from. I’m so excited to do this tour with my co-host, Luke Gannon. What’s up, Luke? Luke Gannon: Hey, Reggie. I am doing pretty well. It’s been super sunny in Minneapolis this week, which has really lifted my spirits, so that’s been lovely. How are you doing? Reggie Rucker: I’m doing well, Luke. I’m doing well. But first I need to apologize. I’m sorry I don’t have any throwback jams for you today, so I’m truly sorry. But I’m excited about this episode nonetheless. And the reason why I’m excited is we’ve done composting episodes before and they’re always really great, always learn something new. But what I think is really special about what you’re going to hear from Renee, our guest today, is that this isn’t so much a composting story as it is a community story. It’s a story about building networks and coalitions and partnerships to join forces with people who share a common cause with you. Even if they may not know it initially, but you help them find it, you help them see it. It takes a certain type of creativity and really brilliance in the truest sense of the word to make certain projects come together. And Renee is that creative and brilliant in spades. So, Luke, I’ll let you go ahead and take the story from here. Luke Gannon: So today on the show, Renee V. Wallace from FoodPLUS Detroit shares how she has built a strong network of organizations piloting programs that focus on community sustainability. Through her efforts, she has united people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives to create sustainable change. Here’s Renee. Reneé Wallace: I am Renee V. Wallace, and I lead a nonprofit called FoodPLUS Detroit. And we have a composting initiative called the People’s Compost Initiative, and it was one of our first inaugural programs when we started FoodPLUS back in 2014. I tell people I’m part contagion and part evangelist, so I’m out really looking at composting from a systems perspective in terms of how we do this work. And so last year I moved from just… not just, but talking with others about the whats, whys, hows, and all of that, to actually entering into a partnership to actually start a composting business. So I tell people, you get close to this, be careful. Because we really are looking for everyone to find their place in it. I firmly believe that. And so FoodPLUS Detroit, when we started the organization, originally it was an idea of Michigan State University. They were looking to develop this network of innovation coalitions across the world, and they selected seven cities, and one US city was in Detroit, all the others were at other places. And so myself and Kathryn Lynch Underwood, we explored that. And we were like, “Okay, so one more non-profit for what?” Detroit is just very, very well known for urban agricultural work, and so the start of this was from a food systems perspective, close the loop, right? And when we were looking at the landscape of what was being done at that time, now mind you, this was 2012, 13 when we were making these decisions, there was a big, big gap in composting. Back then even if you Googled food waste, you would be back on page 15 on Google at that time. Well, fast-forward, it’s in our faces now. But that wasn’t true then. People who were using compost were finding that they had to… We had to always bring it in. We had to bring it in. And it was like, no, we can do this. And so I didn’t know anything about composting. I tell people, to all the folks that say I don’t know anything. I’m like, “Good, that’s a great place to start.” But you can make it accessible at so many different levels. That’s my belief. I’m a systems person. System process change is what I do. Luke Gannon: Renee has been involved in composting since its earliest murmurs, while always conscious of the significance of food systems. It wasn’t until she immersed herself in composting that she truly grasped its profound importance in both the community and the environment. Reneé Wallace: When it first started out, it was about the food system. Let’s close the loop. It makes sense. It was food. As I often say to people, everybody eats, we ate, but we don’t eat everything. So what happens to the food that we didn’t eat? So what’s going to happen to that food? And along the way, it evolved from being just about the system closing the loop because you can rescue food and feed more people. You can take the food and feed the animals. For me, the conversation started to shift from not just about the food system, but when I learned about compost, compost has superpowers. It’s more of a city’s systems solution. It’s a soil-based solution because once you get away from composting, the act itself, you start to look at compost, the product. And what does compost in soil do? It not only improves the quality of the soil for growing the food, it’s going to improve the quality of the soil to have the plant sequester even carbon. It’s going to improve the quality of the soil so that water can infiltrate and you stop flooding my dog on basement. Luke Gannon: Compost forms a vital network connecting a multitude of organisms. It nourishes humans with food, provides essential nutrients for plant growth and vitality, and contributes to the development of resilient infrastructure, ensuring strong foundations for our environment. Reneé Wallace: As I started to have a deeper understanding of the power of compost, it started to shift the conversation about it. I talk about it in terms of what do we have a need for. I’m not talking to you about just composting or compost itself, I’m talking to you about what is happening in the quality of our life. If our basements are flooding, if people are dying from heat, okay, let’s plant some trees. How about we plant some dog on trees? How about we make the soil good so the trees have a good start? Because oftentimes the trees don’t do well because the soil is not well. So if we can build healthy soil, then we can build solutions. Luke Gannon: Every single day we make a choice. The majority of people want at least some of the same things, clean air, clean water, and healthy food. We have the power to contribute in having that. If we make the choice to compost our food, instead of putting it in the landfill. Reneé Wallace: Accessible first in people’s minds, I tell people, listen, in kindergarten, I’m going to take you all the way back. What’s the first thing they taught us in kindergarten? Where everything goes. Everything had a place in kindergarten, did it not? Now, you need to hang your coat right here. Put your shoes right here. Sit your little body part right here. This is where you put the books back. It’s the same thing. You are already making decisions, but help people shift the decision they make based on something they want. Luke Gannon: Change is made in participatory democracies. Renee sees a clear pathway for sharing knowledge and creating participation. Reneé Wallace: I frame it and I talk about it as the three EPs. The first EP is enabled policy. Second EP is enable public, and the third EP is enable practice. So enabled policy, you have to have an environment that allows for a thing to happen. The stewards of our cities and our counties and our states have to create a policy environment that enables us to do these things at whatever scale we want to do it. That’s the first EP. The second EP is we have to have enable public, we have to be people who are informed and understand why this is important to do and what our part is in doing it. One, do I want to participate in it, and will I lend my voice to the conversation that allows the stewards that are passing the policies to say yes? And then you have to have enable practice. You have to have people that know what the heck they’re doing. Luke Gannon: The beautiful thing about composting is its accessibility, the potential to do it at every scale. Reneé Wallace: We need to work out models that are going to allow us to put it in everybody’s reach. And when you have diverse scales, then you can build models that look different in different places so that you can make it accessible. A process I put in place a few years ago, I started doing pilots because I believe in demonstrating. We wanted to inform the policy. So how do you inform the policy? You inform the policy by demonstrating how to do it. One of my pilots, I paired… Wayne State University, they had been trying to do a compost program on their campus and had not been able to really get that going. I helped them design a program. So we built out programs on both sides. It’s like, okay, the university has the materials. We created a program, compost warrior student-led program. The students are collecting the materials. We get the services to let them use the trucks to bring the materials. We worked with the grounds department, which brought leaves over. We built this thing up and we built a community. We built a program, and we built a program in such a way that it was about integrating two communities, a city, and a campus community. Luke Gannon: Renee is involved in multiple pilot projects, partnering with other organizations to create a cross-communal network that is driving collaboration and shared interest and making a sustainable difference across Detroit. Reneé Wallace: So my third pilot, which is in the neighborhood where I live, are people who live in a really nice neighborhood and they decided to activate the alleys. So we started doing work in the alleys to activate the alleys. So we’ve been a part of the alley activation program. And we started to talk about, well, what are we going to do in these alleys and what are we going to do in the neighborhood? So people are growing food. It’s like, well, yeah, we got a few people interested in composting. So they’re backyard composters. And what we’re working toward is we’re going to build a shared system in the alley. We’ve networked, it’s either 12 or 18 alleys now. And so first it was, let’s go from green way to dream way. First of all, let’s just get them cleaned up where we can use them, they’re green, they’re beautiful. And now let’s dream what do we want to do in the alleys. So there’s a lot of different things going on, murals and other kinds of things. And so we’re going to build a system, a shared system, and drop-offs throughout the alley system. Luke Gannon: Renee actively contributes to the Detroit City Council Green Task Force and played a pivotal role in establishing the Organics Recycling Committee within the Sustainability Advisory Group. In every initiative she undertakes, Renee prioritizes meeting people where they are, approaching each situation with understanding rather than coercion. Reneé Wallace: If we want to be successful, it’s not about making it cookie-cutter per se. Now the process is a process, how you come to it is diverse. Look at what people want. Look at what people are doing. Look at where their heart is. What’s going to motivate them to come do this process, that’s what’s going to be different as you go from community to community. And here I am in Detroit, and if you’ve brought four other people here in Detroit, you’re going to get four different versions of what this looks and feels like. Detroit has been doing urban ag forever, and we chose strategically certain things that were not happening in the food system to say, hey, y’all, we can grow. We have a next. Let’s go. We’ve been doing it this way, now let’s do something else. And we picked composting as one of those what is next. This was back in the time, early on when the vertical gardening wasn’t popular, the new ways of growing food. So back in 2012, 13, 14, we were just really starting to innovate some of these ways. Luke Gannon: Community organizing around farming has long been a staple in Detroit. Now the city is finally catching up, leveraging community input to drive policies that actively support farmers and composters alike. Reneé Wallace: Presently, we’re working on the policy. In Michigan, landmark policy just passed Part 115, which has very, very significant compost standards and regulation. The whole state is moving away from disposal approaches to sustainable materials management. The policy is going to help drive the entire state. And so we had very limited policy at a local level. We had some language in our urban ag ordinance. And the language beyond that was the solid waste policy plan, advocating for policy that is tiered, so that depending on what I’m doing should dictate what the requirements are. And the state is such that we were able to raise the ceiling a bit on the state level, which gave us a little more room at a local level on what it is that we could put in place. And two of the bills in the package addressed composting in particular. Luke Gannon: FoodPLUS Detroit is expanding its partnerships with farmer’s markets across the city to ensure that the food utilized at these markets is returned to the soil completing the cycle of sustainability. Reneé Wallace: The vast majority of the composting right now is happening with people who are farming, people who are growing food. We have a network of community markets. We have like 20 community markets of farms and some farm stands around the city. So one of the pilots that I’m involved in now is we’re going to do drop-offs at three farmer’s markets to pilot it so that we can start to look at collecting materials first from behind the counter with the farmers and things that the food that doesn’t get eaten or sold, or it’s just scrapped and collecting that. And it goes back to the farms that are composting. And then hopefully, we’ll be able to expand that across all the markets. So then we can begin to educate and engage the people who come to the market. So look at the community and what they’re interested in. And so the policy has to change. So a number of people looking at it from diverse ways that meet the needs of our diverse population to me is what’s important. One message, but it’s multiple voices. Luke Gannon: Wow. Well, thank you so much for letting us share your story on the show today, Renee, and for being a part of the movement to build local self-reliance in Detroit. Reggie Rucker: Luke, as always, great job. Thank you so much. And Renee, thank you for reminding us of the humanity that we find when we connect with each other and the Earth that we live on and get life from. Always a welcome reminder. And thanks to all of you, our listeners, for tuning in. We’ll be back again in two weeks with another story out of Detroit. But in the meantime, check out the show notes from today’s episode to dive deeper into what we discussed today. And as always, you can visit ilsr.org for more on our work to fight corporate control and build local power. Or just send us an email to [email protected] to let us know what’s on your mind. This show is produced by Luke Gannon and me, Reggie Rucker. The podcast is edited by Luke Gannon and Tea Noelle. The music for the season is also composed by Tea Noelle. Thank you so much for listening to Building Local Power.

 

 

If you want your city to be a focus in an upcoming season, send an email to [email protected].

Like this episode? Please help us reach a wider audience by sharing Building Local Power with your family and friends. We would love your feedback. Please email [email protected]. Subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice.

 

Subscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Android Apps | RSS

 

Music Credit: Mattéa Overstreet

Photo Credit: Em McPhie, ILSR’s Digital Communications Manager

Podcast produced by Reggie Rucker and Luke Gannon

Podcast edited by Luke Gannon and Mattéa Overstreet

Copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.

Follow the Institute for Local Self-Reliance on Twitter and Facebook and, for monthly updates on our work, sign-up for our ILSR general newsletter.

Lanay Gilbert-Williams, born and raised in Detroit, experienced a childhood marked by both trauma and love, instilling in her a deep sense of community. On this episode of Building Local Power: The City Series, Lanay shares her journey to becoming the board president of The Detroit People’s Food Cooperative, a grocery store grounded in the principles of Black community ownership and food sovereignty. Inspired by the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network, the cooperative embodies intergenerational and interracial collaboration. In sharing her story, Lanay emphasizes the importance of local self-reliance, advocating for solutions grown within the city and tailored to its residents. The Detroit People’s Food Cooperative represents a vital step towards fostering food sovereignty in a neighborhood historically affected by food apartheid, contributing to Detroit’s journey towards greater self-sufficiency and empowerment.

Related Resources

Detroit People’s Food Cooperative 

Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network 

Love: What Life Is All about by Leo F. Buscaglia

Transcript

Reggie Rucker: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Building Local Power Detroit, our first stop in a multi-city series where we explore how to build local power from the experiences of people who were doing just that on the ground in their respective cities. These are the people who are proving what’s possible when a community comes together to shape its future. We talk to community leaders, advocates, activists, entrepreneurs, elected officials, all who have powerful stories about the drive to write Detroit’s next chapter. We think these stories will be illuminating in their own right, but also hope they inspire you on your journey to build local power wherever you’re listening from. I’m so excited to do this tour with my co-host, Luke Gannon. What’s up, Luke? Luke Gannon: I am so excited too. What’s going on, Reggie? How are you? Reggie Rucker: I’m great. And I know you’re just as excited about this episode as I am, but it takes on a special meaning for me because it’s an episode about food and I love food. I mean, everybody loves food, but I truly have this special relationship with food. And, Luke, I know I keep throwing old nostalgic music at you, do you remember this old Boyz II Men song, A Song For Mama? Luke Gannon: Reggie, you taught me everything. Of course, I remember the song. Reggie Rucker: Okay. Good. So Boyz II Men, although originated from Philly, they were signed to Motown Records. So there’s your Detroit connection. But there’s this line in the song about the loving you is like food for my Soul, and it was on the Soul Food movie soundtrack, but that line hits, especially today. I thought about it for this episode, the way that food has a way of stitching families together, communities together with love as the fabric. We talk today to a leader of a food co-op in Detroit. And boy, does she embody everything about that essence of love and community and the power of food to sustain it and hold it all together? I truly can’t wait for you to hear her story and message. So, Luke, why don’t you go ahead and take it away. Luke Gannon: Thanks, Reggie. It’s true. You really said it all. So with that, let’s jump right into Lanay’s story. Here’s Lanay. Lanay Gilbert-W…: My name is Lanay Gilbert-Williams. I am the Board President of Detroit People’s Food Co-op, a black led, community-owned grocery store that’ll open this year in Detroit. I am a native Detroiter, so born and raised here. I have birthed all my babies here. My parents are here and my family is here. So Detroit is home for me. I am probably like many Detroiters, one who had a childhood filled with the trauma and love. My mother was a single mother of my siblings and I. She had been on drugs, she’d gone through recovery. My siblings and I, my sisters, we were teen moms. I’ve gone to 13 different schools before graduating high school, right? So we’ve moved even more than that. We were moving every year, every year and a half. Detroit is in my bones. It’s what I know. That’s why I’m still here. It’s what I know. And it is a villagey type city, right? So it’s a big city, but we all are comfortable around each other. Like any city on the planet, all the shadows roll together, everybody in the light rolls together. So Detroit is home. I love the way we do. It’s a love-filled place. Well, my mom in going through Narcotics Anonymous. Growing up, as children have always seen her helping people, being around people of different ethnic backgrounds. That’s how NA goes. Everybody shows up and they’re open and they’re vulnerable and they’re supportive of each other. I’ve always seen my mom in those spaces, always. I don’t remember my mom not being the person that she is, even when she was an addict. She has literally always been her. And so she is loving and she’s helpful. I’ve gone to her house before and she say, “Hey, meet so-and-so. I met her at the dentist’s office earlier,” and invited her over for dinner. When we were younger, she used to stop and pick other moms and children up who were walking with groceries and say, “Kids, move over, get in the back.” We’re like, “Here she go again.” And she [inaudible 00:05:19] thing. She like 117 pounds. She like 5253, but this is just who she is. She is absolutely phenomenal and she’s still that way today. She’s a mama through and through. She’s a community mama through and through. And so all of my siblings, we are that type of people. We’re community people. Anybody who knows us know we can walk into a space and we’re going to be serving in some type of way or people will know us in a short amount of time. But that’s how my mom is. My dad, if you live in this neighborhood, everybody knows who Mr. Gilbert is, “You’re Mr. Gilbert’s daughter, right?” So for both of my parents to say their name to anyone who knows them, it opens the door. It automatically builds trust between you and them because, “I know your mama. I know your daddy.” They know all their neighbors here in the city of Detroit. They’re those type of people. Luke Gannon: The idea for Detroit People’s Food Co-op was inspired by an allied organization called the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network. At the core of both of these organizations is community. Lanay Gilbert-W…: This is an organization that has been knee-deep in the fight for black food sovereignty here in Detroit for over a decade, right? So the importance is to ensure that in this predominantly African Americans city, the people in this city have a space and opportunity to govern their food system. Detroit People’s Food Co-op has 14 plus years in the making. So it’s Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network that put together the steering committees, went out, did research, raised the money for the market studies and things like that. So this is important. This co-op is important for a number of reasons here in the city of Detroit, and even in the neighborhood in which it’s being built. The building itself is co-owned by the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network and another organization, Develop Detroit. So the co-op is an anger tenant in the building. So that organization envisioned the co-op. And then once it was created, it’s become its own entity. So in this $22 plus million building where the primary tenant on the first floor in this building was literally built to house the co-op. So it’s built to suit. Luke Gannon: Food is essential to life, and it’s not just the physical nourishment. The cooperative is constructed by and for the community working hand in hand with local vendors and farmers to ensure that dollars remain within the community, circulating and fostering local economic sustainability. Lanay Gilbert-W…: The city is predominantly African American, and the majority of the grocery stores, the gas stations, all of the stores period are not African American owned or run, right? In this historically black city. This is not something that our children are used to seeing. It’s important to give people in any community the right and the opportunity to govern their food system. Food should be healthy, it should be affordable, it should be culturally relevant. If you go into a Hispanic grocery store, an Italian grocery store, an African grocery store, you will see foods that are relevant to that community. That is not something that you see in the city of Detroit. That is not something that our children are used to seeing. Our children are not in the habit of seeing the adults in their community create the solutions to the most basic issues in the community. It needs to happen. So not only is this co-op Black-led, again, which is important. We have two smaller Black-owned grocery stores that opened up within the last two years. They’re small. Our larger grocery store, Kroger, Meijer, Walmart, those are not community-owned. Those are not Black-led. Those do not reinvest their money in the community like a co-op does, right? Detroit does not have a food co-op. Detroit People’s Food Co-op is the only co-op. We’ve had food co-ops in the past. We have no food co-ops right now. So the community is not getting to govern its food. So it’s important that it’s Black-led. It’s in a neighborhood that doesn’t have a lot of grocery stores, right? People tend to call these areas food deserts. In the Black food sovereignty space and movement, we don’t say food deserts because we acknowledge that a desert is naturally created. If you have anywhere on the planet that there is no access to food, that’s a food apartheid, that is intentionally created, that’s strategic. There’s food everywhere. This is not a food desert in which we’re building a grocery store. This is some intentional things being done. This is a community that used to house another community, Black Bottom, right? So as the United States of America decades ago [inaudible 00:11:37] this clearance of a lot of minority communities throughout the U.S., it was called slum clearance or something like that. There was an act to clear the slums in many communities across the United States of America. Here in Detroit, that’s in a community called Black Bottom, where you have thriving Black businesses, majority Black people lived in this area. Detroit built 75 freeway through it. This is the same area in which the co-op is being built. That’s important. So historically, that’s important. Black people in this city where we have 30 plus percent living at or below poverty level, the majority of our parents live at or below poverty level. I think it’s like 43, 45% of our children live at or below poverty level. Black folks need a win. Our children are watching our communities go through gentrification where people were going from the majority of our stores not being run by the adults in our children’s community, and now we have new adults moving in the community who are acquiring power that still yet our young people have not even seen the adults in their community acquire. This is absolutely necessary. So on top of all of that, it’s a community-owned grocery store. So Detroit has different populations. We have African populations, African American, Indian, Asian, White. We have all these different ethnicities represented in Detroit, but it’s a segregated city. We have large Arab population, we have Dearborn. For all these different populations, we don’t come together, we don’t work together. We tend not to even go into each other’s neighborhoods. This is the only opportunity that Detroit has right now in which people from all these different communities can come together and run this business together. That’s crazy. It’s an absolute heaven. Luke Gannon: All revolutionary ideas stem from a pressing need in a bold vision. The executive director of the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network has long been dedicated to initiating and organizing systemic changes within the education and food spaces. Lanay Gilbert-W…: The executive director of the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network, his name is Malik Yakini. I met him when my 19-year-old had entered into kindergarten. I was a homeschooling parent and I said, “Either my child is going to be homeschooled by me or be in an African-centered school.” We had a few African-centered schools here, schools that teach your Black child about Black history, 365 days a year instead of only 28, 29 days in February, who teaches our children about their ancestry and their city’s history. And so I enrolled her in this school and he was the principal at the time. He was a co-founder of this African-centered school in [inaudible 00:15:05]. And he’d been known for doing a lot in the Black community, to assist the community in being self-determined, right? In creating solutions in the community. He has done things like, assisted with the creation of the Detroit Food Policy Council, the National Black Food and Justice Alliance. He has done a number of things to just bring us together because, again, it’s necessary. And this is how so many people got involved. When he talked about the food co-op over a decade ago, I said, “Whatever it is that he’s doing, I know he’s going to pull it off, and I know he is going to back it with a sincere heart and he’s going to bring awesome people together,” just because I knew his character. So I am in the habit of collecting elders in my life, I love to gain wisdom, I like to listen to it, I like to listen to the stories and the history. And he is one that I’ve gone to time and time again over the years to ask questions about serving in the community, “Where do you think I would best serve in the community? How do you think I could help out?” I would randomly send him messages and he would just randomly answer. It’s always available to give some tidbits of wisdom. So when he talked about the food co-op, it was just a thought, but I was like, “Hey, where can I pay my money?” Right? So many of us were like, “Take my money.” Someone asked me recently, “How did you get this many member owners to invest in something that’s not even built yet?” It’s because we knew the people involved. This board of the Detroit People’s Food Co-op, each board member has their own following. These are people who love people, right? They love people. And in loving people, they also love themselves and love their community. So just like they stand up for other people, they stand up for themselves and their community. It’s an amazing table to have a seat at. So I just wanted to get involved. I’d been a member owner for quite some time. And in the past few years I said, “You know what? Let me join a committee. Let me prioritize time. We have enough time to do everything. It just depends on how we prioritize it. Let me prioritize time to add on to the Detroit People’s Food Co-op.” I am a mom of six. It is important to me to live, be a living example of the principles that I teach to my children. And I say to my children, “No matter where you live on the planet, wherever you live on the planet when you’re older, I want you to pay attention to the issues in the community and determine what part of what solution you’re going to play.” They have to see me doing that in order to embody that. Me watching my mother is like, “If you’re my child, people will be able to recognize you by your works. Don’t show up and say you’re mine and you aren’t doing what you’re supposed to do, right?” Luke Gannon: When election season arrived, Lanay started being mentored by another committee chair. Eventually, this chair asked Lanay if she would consider running for a board position. Lanay decided to run and was successfully elected. Following her service on a committee and learning under the guidance of her mentor, she eventually became the board president. But along the journey to bring the Detroit People’s Food Cooperative to fruition, they’ve encountered various obstacles. Lanay Gilbert-W…: The majority of the co-ops across the U.S. are not Black-led. And so Black-led co-ops have the same obstacles and that is getting access to funding just like any Black-owned business. So that was probably the main obstacle is getting funding. I know that the DBCFSN had to go through a whole lot with the city, and getting the land, the back and forth. I know in being a guest speaker at an organization here in Detroit that supports people of color, I’ve been asked by people in that organization, “Are you going to continue to say that the co-op is Black-led? Aren’t you worried about that? Aren’t you concerned that you’re going to be sued? Can you legally say that? Aren’t you scared that people are going to call you racist?” I heard a whole lot of crazy stuff that day. I thought that was so odd because it’s an organization that supports people of color, number one. Number two, these were all elders. And I thought, “Have you never had to fight for anything in your life? Why would you attempt to make me question what I’m fighting for if it’s not wrong?” We are in a predominantly African American city. I have children who are not in the habit of seeing the adults in their community create the solutions in their community. They see the killing of unarmed Black men. We are in that whole era where not only do these things happen, but they’re widely publicized and social media makes it even bigger. Our babies don’t see us doing big things for us in our communities. They see us being beat down, or because of generational poverty and generational trauma, they see us beating each other down and they can easily believe that this is just who we are as a people. They’ve not seen us at our best because they aren’t old enough to know about all the thriving Black communities and businesses we’ve had, the work that we’ve done because a lot of those things got erased. For elders to say those things to me, for a split second, made me wonder, “Should I be the one in a space talking about Black stuff? Am I stirring the pot? Do I want to be the one that stirs the pot?” It’s my husband impressed upon me the need to speak the truth at any time and in any room. And he said, “Whatever it is that you say and however it is that you represent the co-op will be on point because they chose you to be the board president and knew who you were before becoming a board president, right? You’ve been represented up until this point. Just get up there and talk the truth.” And after I did that, some city council members came to me and said, “My goodness, you said so many things up there that we can’t say out loud.” That was weird. “You’re elected public officials, you mean you can’t speak about the elephants in the room?” It was feeling really Twilight Zone-ish. For me personally, that has been an obstacle. But when I get into a room with the member owners, again, Black, White, every other ethnicity you can imagine, they love it. They love being in a room with somebody who’s willing to say out loud what we all see, but we don’t talk about. I am grateful to inherit the wisdom of the generations before me, but I don’t have that fear. And if ever I do, then I need to be stepped back or put down. And I love this younger generation that’s coming up because they are willing to address the elephants in the room. Luke Gannon: While the Detroit People’s Food Cooperative is becoming a reality, thanks to an intergenerational vision, one that seeks to give back to the very people who conceived it. And in America where privatization reigns supreme, it can be challenging for individuals to grasp the notion that ownership doesn’t have to be confined to the individual. It can be shared. Lanay Gilbert-W…: The myth in impoverished communities is that the only way that you can own something is if you are a rich white male or if you are a millionaire of any ethnicity. It’s been really hard to get the community to understand that they own the grocery store and that they govern it through coming to committee meetings and joining all of the different processes involved, their votes, the work that’s really hard. It’s over 2,200 member owners of the grocery store and counting from all over Michigan. It’s really hard to get people to wrap their head around this business model that you can come together, pull your money together, and you can move mountains. They’re not buying that, and that’s hard. Luke Gannon: Despite the challenges, Lanay continues to be motivated by what the co-op means for the Detroit community. Lanay Gilbert-W…: Self-reliance in a city, it means to me that those in the city, again, are creating solutions from within the city and supporting each other. We are circulating our money in the city. That’s not something that’s happening in Detroit right now. We have many business owners who come into the city, they make money and they take it right back out of the city. A self-reliant city utilizes its resources to care for itself. Detroit needs that. It is important for a city to grow its solutions from within the city, solutions that are relevant to the residents in a city, and that’s how I see a self-reliant city. Now, when it comes to the co-op, we accept vendors. We’ve been accepting applications from vendors all over the state of Michigan. On our application, it states that we prioritize local vendors. We also prioritize vendors who are people of color. It is very important for people to know that when they shop in the Detroit People’s Food Co-op, they are putting money in the pockets of people in their community. And this grocery store, you will have local products. Local vendors will be feeding families in the community. We’re looking for staff members from within the community. So we’re adding to the self-reliance of the city. Luke Gannon: At the heart of this vision is a simple principle, love. Lanay Gilbert-W…: It’s a book that was in my mom’s bookshelf when I was younger. I think she used to go to secondhand stores and buy a gazillion books. And she’s one of those moms where if you said, “I’m bored,” she’d say, “Go read a book.” And so there was a book titled Love by an author, Leo Buscaglia, I believe an Italian author. And he actually studied love so much that he was giving college courses on it. That’s one of those elephants in a room, right? We all have experienced love, we all talk about it, we don’t talk about it, right? How it influences us, how we utilize it, how it shapes the world around us. And that was a book at 12 or 13 changed my life. And every few years, I read it again just to remind myself of how important it is to love on purpose, to prioritize loving. And for me, again, as a mother, I talk to my children a lot about fear. And I believe that love is an awesome solution to combating fear. So I say to my children, “Sometimes if you watch the news, you’ll see that there’s an agenda going on to make people hate each other, make us fight each other, make us fire ourselves. And I want you to know that’s strategic. You have to focus on love. You have to love yourself.” Again, you can’t fight for Black food sovereignty if you’re Black and you don’t love being Black. I love other people who are not Black and I love myself, I love my children, I love my community, right? And so that fuels me to be in spaces and speak about the importance of us loving each other and loving ourselves, loving the differences that each of us has, respecting that we are different. No, we are not all the same. You cannot love a person if you’re not willing to see their differences and what makes them them. So the Black community should be allowed to be Black however it defines that. And so should every other ethnic group. And then we should all bring our A game, what we love to the table, and share it with each other. That book inspired me to do that as a young child. Luke Gannon: There was so much wisdom, history, knowledge, and love in this story. Thank you so much, Lanay, for sharing your story and your love with us on the show today. Reggie Rucker: Great job, Luke. Thank you so much for this. And, Lanay, we see you doing big things. Thank you. And next to all of you, our listeners for tuning in. We’ll be back again in two weeks with another story out of Detroit. But in the meantime, check out the show notes from today’s episode to dive deeper into what we discussed today. And as always, you can visit ilsr.org for more on our work to fight corporate control and build local power. Or just send us an email to [email protected]. Let us know what’s on your mind. This show is produced by Luke Gannon and me, Reggie Rucker. The podcast is edited by Luke Gannon and Téa Noelle. The music for the season is also composed by Téa Noelle. Thank you so much for listening to Building Local Power.

 

If you want your city to be a focus in an upcoming season, send an email to [email protected].

Like this episode? Please help us reach a wider audience by sharing Building Local Power with your family and friends. We would love your feedback. Please email [email protected]. Subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice.

 

Subscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Android Apps | RSS

 

Music Credit: Mattéa Overstreet

Photo Credit: Em McPhie, ILSR’s Digital Communications Manager

Podcast produced by Reggie Rucker and Luke Gannon

Podcast edited by Luke Gannon and Mattéa Overstreet

Copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.

Follow the Institute for Local Self-Reliance on Twitter and Facebook and, for monthly updates on our work, sign-up for our ILSR general newsletter.

 

A vibrant independent bookstore symbolizes a shared community enthusiasm for learning, discovery, heritage, and progress. Source Booksellers, nestled in Detroit, has long been a reliable hub for non-fiction literature. Janet W. Jones established the store in 1989 and nurtured her daughter, Alyson Jones Turner, amidst its shelves. Alyson recounts the origin of Source Booksellers and its vital significance in fostering self-awareness, meaningful dialogue, and shared history within the community. Alyson elaborates on how local self-reliance, to her, embodies a robust support network among individuals, businesses, and organizations—a spirit of cooperation rather than competition.

Related Resources

• Source Booksellers 
• Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit Conference 
• Don’t Subsidize Big Boxes at Local Shops’ Expense
• Why Does Congress want me to Shun my Local Bookstore and Shop Online Instead?
• Alyson’s Book Recommendations
  • They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
  • Black Bottoms Saints by Alice Randall

Transcript

Reggie Rucker: Hello and welcome back, back again to a brand new episode and season of Building Local Power. I’m your co-host, Reggie Rucker. Delighted to be joined once again by my favorite co-host, and that’s not just because she’s my only co-host, Luke Gannon. What’s up, Luke? Luke Gannon: Hey, Reggie. Great to be back. Back again. Wow. Rolls off the tongue from my middle school Eminem days. I see what you’re doing, Reggie. (singing) Reggie Rucker: Mr. Marshall Mathers himself, because as many of you probably know, Eminem represents Detroit just about as hard as anyone. So maybe you know a little bit about Detroit because of what you saw in the movie 8 Mile that you starred in, or maybe the Detroit Lions or Pistons or Tigers or Red Wings have given you a window into the city, or maybe it’s Motown or it’s the Motor City mantra you’re familiar with, or maybe you live there. Shout out to our Detroit listeners. In any case, what we’re going to do over the next several episodes and seasons is explore how to build local power from the experiences of people who are doing just that on the ground, starting in Detroit. These are the people who are proving what’s possible when the community comes together to shape its future. We’ll talk to community leaders, advocates, activists, entrepreneurs and elected officials, all who have powerful stories about the drive to write Detroit’s next chapter. We think these stories will be illuminating in their own right, but hope they’ll also inspire you on your journey to build local power wherever you’re listening from. So with that said, Luke, what do we have going on for this episode? Luke Gannon: In this episode, we venture to Midtown Detroit, home to Source Booksellers, a local bookstore and community author event space that has had its doors open since 1989. Alyson Jones Turner shares her story, highlighting how Source Booksellers has woven a robust community fabric and network in Detroit. Alyson Jones Tu…: I’m Alyson Jones Turner, Source Booksellers here in Detroit, Michigan. We’re a unique niche of non-fiction books. This is a family-owned business. My mother is the founder of Source Booksellers, Janet W. Jones, and she started this book business very interested in non-fiction books and dedicated to the community here in Detroit. Luke Gannon: For nearly a century, Alyson’s family has called Detroit home, cultivating a deep appreciation for education and fostering a strong connection to the community over the years. Alyson Jones Tu…: I think we should start with my grandmother who came to Detroit in the early ’30s, I’ll say, and she later became a librarian. So our love for books probably started with her. My mother and I are both teachers. She’s retired. She was in the Detroit Public School system for 41 years, and after that started this business and I taught for more than a decade or so in the elementary classroom. So I guess that keeps us close to the book and also to the community. So many of the years I was in the classroom and then after and on the weekends I was working with and working at the bookstore. Definitely around COVID, I decided we had to get online. We were never online before. And so as a point of survival at that point, we put our books online and I sort of made a home here doing co-running with my mom at that point. I don’t remember myself from, I guess my early days not being a part of the bookstore, not getting books, bringing people up, doing all of the things, but right now I do events and the online and ordering and things like that. Luke Gannon: Alyson and Source Booksellers grew up together. Alyson remembers when her bookstore was a vendor in an old jazz and blues bar. Alyson Jones Tu…: Our bookstore started, I guess today, it may be called a popup, but it really wasn’t. There were authors in town and we would go and support with books or there would be events where there are vendors, and then we would be a book vendor. That happened for the first few years of the business. Around 2002, we moved into a collective of women businesses and we were the book business. So at that point we had a brick and mortar. We could invite people in, have events and expand our book collections into our category, health and wellbeing, history and culture by and about women. All of these categories grew out of having that space. So we were there for about 10 years and then we crossed the street literally, and we had customers help us bring our books across the street. And we are still on Cass Avenue today in our own brick and mortar, which we expanded a year and a half ago. It’s been about 20-some years just on this block and 33 and a half or 34 years in book selling. Luke Gannon: Alyson and her mother’s shared passion for books and dedication to learning have left a lasting impact on the Detroit community. They fostered a reciprocal relationship in the Midtown neighborhood, providing books, events, conversations, and education, and in turn receiving steadfast support from the community. Alyson Jones Tu…: Well, I think one of our passions is with our non-fiction that we really believe that it’s important for people to know about history, know things, know about the world, and also whether it’s through memoir or through history or any other way to get to self-knowledge. Luke Gannon: The people of Detroit have attained the self-knowledge Alyson refers to, thanks to their local booksellers and librarians who have introduced them to literature that broadens their perspectives. Alyson Jones Tu…: There’s a community member in town that remembers my grandmother finding particular books for him, like particular books she felt that he would read. And so in his later years, he totally is grateful and remembers that about her. I think what I remember is going to hear authors with my mother, my sister, and being in awed by them and getting… Sort of like if you’re going to a concert and you hear a concert and you get the album and you want it signed. So I do remember that, and I’m really grateful that we’re able to offer that to families today. Luke Gannon: Source Booksellers has ingrained itself deeply within the community. When the bookshop relocated, neighbors, residents, customers, and supporters united to assist in walking armfuls of books across the street to the new location. Even customers from 30 years ago still make visits to the shop today. Through their event hosting, they’ve established a space where authors and locals can come together and connect. Alyson Jones Tu…: Hanif Abdurraqib, the podcast called the Object Of Sound, and one of his books, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. It was one of our really good selling book. He wrote a book, a tribute to a tribe called Quest, and in that it had a Detroit connection with J Dilla, with James Yancey. And so he came to our bookstore and spoke about the book and was full of people that knew of him, but also we’ve done a lot around J Dilla. (singing) We had Dilla Time, we had Dan Charnas here in the city for that. So that was one time when it was just like everybody was just loving everything, that the people were so grateful that they could meet him and see him, and that his content was something that they were looking for, looking to eat up. Luke Gannon: Source Booksellers provides a platform for authors and community members to engage in discussions about how our history shapes our present. The topics explored range from segregation to fostering harmony with the natural world. Alyson Jones Tu…: In the past, we’ve had conversations that means that you don’t have to have a book. We can just have a topic and everyone can come talk about it. Just yesterday, we had an author from the city that was looking for a venue to celebrate her book, and we were open to and excited about that. We go out into the community. We have been the bookseller for the Detroit Bioneers for all of the years, and sometimes they just buy calendars and books about birds, but it doesn’t matter. There’s an author series also in town that we have been a partner of. And to our delight, we are one and a half blocks to the main Detroit library. So if they need us to run some books up there for their authors, then it really works because they’re a public entity. The authors want their books sold, but it’s their job to get the public to see the author. And so we’ve been able to partner in that way. And the Arab American Museum, we do the same kind of thing. Pull up with the books. Luke Gannon: Source Bookseller’s reliance on its neighborhood network of support has been invaluable, but like any business, it has also faced some obstacles. Alyson Jones Tu…: One obstacle is advertising or getting our word out. That has been a challenge. We’ve worked really, really hard to get bigger events, and that sort of comes with having to draw your audience and being able to draw an audience. And it’s so easy, I think, for a ticket master to draw the tickets and the things that they need, but getting… The newspapers, for example, stopped doing book reviews. So we’re relying on Oprah to pick a book or the Fiddler’s Moon or something to pick a book. And it is very hard to get buzz for particular books that we may be interested in our history and culture area. We have to sort of create the buzz. It makes us very nervous when we commit to having something big and there isn’t really a media support. Luke Gannon: Alyson has resorted to utilizing Source Bookseller’s internal internal communication strategies such as reaching out to various groups and providing event discounts, initiating campaigns on their social media platforms, and leveraging the presence of the author to garner attention. Promoting on bigger platforms is simply unrealistic for many small businesses. Alyson Jones Tu…: We don’t want to compete with a general bookstore. We can’t hold that much stock. We don’t have that much walker. And we do a lot of work gaining interest in history and culture in Detroit and Michigan authors. We did a little NPR promotion, but we can’t do that always. It’s definitely out of budget for every season. Luke Gannon: Alyson elaborates on how local self-reliance to her embodies a robust support network among individuals, businesses, and organizations, a spirit of cooperation rather than competition. Alyson Jones Tu…: A locally self-reliant community, I’m thinking about that may mean that us being here and serving our community. We’re also often relying on the cheese monger up the street to pour our wine at an event or the little market across the street so we could get water for our authors. And these are all things that we can walk to, but we also have community help that’s not as close, but just as important. There are organizations, Free Black Women’s Library of Detroit that would help us promote events or give us ideas because we don’t have all the ideas, but to give us some ideas that we can run with or put a asking for. People can come in and customers can ask us for books that they want. Maybe they don’t want to get it off Amazon, maybe they can walk back to us and pick it up. We’ll order it for them and we’ll bring it in and we’ll call them and we won’t be disappointed if they don’t want it. We’ll find something to do with it, but usually the commitment is on both sides. If you order it for me, I’ll come get it. And so there are even [inaudible 00:14:15] far from our niche, but very important to our customer, and we’ve been able to get that for them. Luke Gannon: In contrast to giants like Barnes & Noble and Amazon, Source Booksellers prioritizes forging close-knit customer relationships. Alyson takes the time to understand her customers’ reading preferences, providing personalized recommendations to meet their specific needs. This commitment to relationship building goes beyond mere book sales fostering communities where individuals come together to discuss this shared history and cultivate connections that last a lifetime. Alyson Jones Tu…: I think that if you would like to read about Detroit that you should pick up Alice Randall, a native Detroiter’s Black Bottom Saints. And you can see all of the people that came through Black Bottom Detroit and also that we celebrate today, but we have our own people in Detroit that are making contributions just like they did. Luke Gannon: We cannot thank Alyson Turner enough for being on the show today. Next time you’re in Detroit, or if you’re in Detroit already, go say hello to Alyson and grab Black Bottom Saints or another non-fiction book of your choice. Thank you so much, Alyson. Reggie Rucker: Such a great story, Luke. Thanks for bringing that to us. As always, such a great job. I swear, any episode where you get to reference J Dilla, that’s a good episode. And so thank you Alyson again for sharing your story with us and giving us that slice of life, that slice of Detroit we don’t always get to see. And thanks to you, our listeners, for tuning in. We’ll be back again in two weeks with another story out of Detroit. But in the meantime, check out the show notes from today’s episode to dive deeper into what we discussed today. And as always, you can visit ilsr.org for more on our work to fight corporate control and build local power, or send us an email to [email protected]. Let us know what’s on your mind. This show is produced by Luke Gannon and me, Reggie Rucker. The podcast is edited by Luke Gannon and Tea Noelle. The music for this season is also composed by Tea Noelle. Thank you so much for listening to Building Local Power.

 

If you want your city to be a focus in an upcoming season, send an email to [email protected].

Like this episode? Please help us reach a wider audience by sharing Building Local Power with your family and friends. We would love your feedback. Please email [email protected]. Subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice.

 

Subscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Android Apps | RSS

 

Music Credit: Mattéa Overstreet

Photo Credit: Em McPhie, ILSR’s Digital Communications Manager

Podcast produced by Reggie Rucker and Luke Gannon

Podcast edited by Luke Gannon and Mattéa Overstreet

Copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.

Follow the Institute for Local Self-Reliance on Twitter and Facebook and, for monthly updates on our work, sign-up for our ILSR general newsletter.

 

In our new season of Building Local Power, The City Series, we take a tour of cities and towns across the U.S. and talk to guests who are working to make their communities more locally self-reliant. Independent business owners, elected city officials, and community leaders explain how their work is moving the needle toward a more just, sustainable, and democratic future.

Upcoming Cities:

• Detroit
• Washington, D.C.
• Baltimore

If you want your city to be a focus in an upcoming season, send an email to [email protected].

Like this episode? Please help us reach a wider audience by sharing Building Local Power with your family and friends. We would love your feedback. Please email [email protected]. Subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice.

 

Subscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Android Apps | RSS

 

Music Credit: Mattéa Overstreet

Photo Credit: Em McPhie, ILSR’s Digital Communications Manager

Podcast produced by Reggie Rucker and Luke Gannon

Podcast edited by Luke Gannon and Mattéa Overstreet

Copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.

Follow the Institute for Local Self-Reliance on Twitter and Facebook and, for monthly updates on our work, sign-up for our ILSR general newsletter.

 

Over the past fifty years, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Department of Justice (DOJ), and the judiciary have consistently approved mergers and acquisitions, contributing to the consolidation of industries that have proven to be bad for competition, consumers, and communities. Despite the prevalence of these mergers and acquisitions, the stories featured this season serve as a reminder of the power of local initiatives to challenge profit-driven corporate consolidation. These efforts are combatting corporatism within their communities and states, mobilizing grassroots movements, and working towards a shared vision for a healthier and more sustainable future.

Related Resources

Check out this season’s episodes:

• Beer Mergers Brew Disaster
• A Rotten Waste Merger
• BlackRock v. Black Gold
• New Mexicans v. Fossil Fuel Giants
• Investment Funds v. A Democratic Future
• Consolidation in the Cord-Cutting Era
• Sparking a Community Broadband Revolution
• Cleanup on Aisle 1990 

Compost (feat. DiorNoel) – A Portrait of the NYC Composting Community 

Transcript

Reggie Rucker: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Building Local Power. I’m your co-host, Reggie Rucker. And all season long, we’ve had this theme, How to Get Away With Merger. And the one thing we wanted to do in this sort of a wrap up episode is actually talk about how do they get away with merger. These are themes that we’ve talked about throughout the season on different episodes. But we really want it to be really clear and highlight some of the methods and tactics that these large corporations use to merge and build their power and influence and at the expense of communities. So we’re going to have a short little discussion. Me and Luke, we’re going to chat it up a little bit and saying, Luke, I guess I should bring her in. What’s up, Luke? How you doing? Luke Gannon: Hey, Reggie, doing pretty well. I mean, I think this has just been a really great season. To start off, Reggie, I mean, there have been so many incredible highlights. What have a couple of years been? Reggie Rucker: Yeah, so I know first for me, I think about… Actually, it was the first episode we did for this season. It was the beer episode and it was a great discussion. Ron’s always great, but what I really appreciated, this was the first time ever since I was told I got to work on a podcast. I’ve been trying to scheme away to get somebody from Modesto, the 209, the Central Valley onto the episode. And so I finally got Amanda Wright from Blaker Brewing, who’s Modesto’s neighbor out in Ceres. So I was finally able to get someone from around that area on the episode. And yeah, so it was just great to have her felt like home and it was really great. I think what I knew we were going to get from that conversation was the degree to which… And this is I think a consistent theme throughout the episodes where it’s not just about the small business owner and the person who’s creating jobs and being an entrepreneur and creating this economic activity. But the degree to which a place like a local brewery is a community hub and it’s just a place to bring community together. I think that was just really one of my highlights of the season and to sort of, again, relive some of that hometown magic. That was really fun for me. How about you? Luke Gannon: Yeah, I love that hometown magic. Definitely one of my highlights this season, which is kind of ironic because the season is called How to Get Away With Merger, and this is one of the episodes where the merger didn’t actually get through. I’m pretty sure still pending, but this is called New Mexicans versus Fossil Fuel Giants. And one of our guests on that episode, her name’s Mariel Nanasi, and this was an episode about this massive company, the Spanish company called IBERDROLA, subsidiary is Avangrid in the United States. It’s in an electric utility company and it has expanded rapidly across the US and it decided that it wanted to buy the public utility company in New Mexico, and it just had a horrible track record. And our guest, Mariel, that we had on knew that this was just going to be horrible for the energy grid, the energy system in New Mexico. And so decided to build this movement of organizers, this grassroots movement, legal counsel, communications team, the list goes on, to fight this. And for at least three years, a number of people spent many, many hours opposing this and ended up winning various legal battles over the course of these three years. And it’s just this really heartening story that shows you that sometimes these community power movements do win. Speaker 3: If you give up, you already have lost, right? The only chance is if we fight back, and so we got to use our talents to do so, and then we have a chance. Luke Gannon: One of the things that talk about a little bit is how there is a lack of government response, unfortunately right now against mergers. And this was an example of a lack of government response. And so the community having to take that on. And that’s a lot for a community to do when you have a whole job, a whole life of your own and you’re doing this whole additional thing on top of it. The power of these community members, these local businesses, these entities that really are so valuable. Reggie Rucker: The theme of the season, which is How to Get Away With Merger and how some of these companies got away with it. And that part that you highlight where it’s the private sector, these individuals or these small grassroots groups really having to pick up the slack from the lack of government response. And that thing you say about these people have other lives to live, but somehow, they’re finding a way to make a part of their life this big fight to push back against the mergers or the power that these powerful companies, these merge companies try to exert in their communities. And that really, that made me think about Wanda from out in East Carroll Parish. So we did the episode about broadband and the community broadband effort in East Carroll Parish. And I just remember the story that Wanda told about one of the managers or executives from Sparklight, and they come to her and they’re like… Wanda: And say, “Well, Wanda, well, I’m going to do this and that for you on your bill so it could come down and you have great service and all of this cool stuff.” I said, “Oh, really?” Said, “That’s awesome.” I said, “But are you going to do that for everybody else too?” Reggie Rucker: And so it makes sense that they would say, oh, I could probably buy this person off and get into like, hey, we’re going to let you go back to your life and you’re going to be taken care of if you just kind of chill out. So yeah, so it makes sense as a tactic to try to push these mergers through and to hear Wanda’s reaction and be like, oh, that’s cool. You’re going to take care of me. You’re going to take care of my neighbor? You’re going to take care of all of us? And if not, then get out of here. So yeah, I think that’s sort of like a slimy tactic. Luke Gannon: There’ve been quite a few ways that we’ve seen how companies really get away with merging. Another thing that comes to mind is, and that is really a thread throughout all of these episodes, are how a lot of these, it was hard to choose a single merger for each of these industries. Ron talks a lot about this in the first episode, but we really see it across the season. There have been a series of smaller mergers that ultimately lead to this really consolidated industry. And like the waste industry as an example, you have the series of smaller mergers over time. And then you have Waste Management being the largest waste company in the United States and Advanced Disposal being the fourth largest and Waste Management buying Advanced Disposal now making it the largest waste company. And so just looking at the history of these mergers and how they slowly gain power in that harm that eventually causes, because it does end up being these really massive mergers. Reggie Rucker: So Luke, are you familiar with the rope-a-dope? Do you know what that phrase means? No. Okay. So Muhammad Ali, famous boxer, grace of all time, all the things, he had this famous fight with George Foreman referred to as the Rumble in the Jungle. So at the time, Muhammad Ali was coming back from sort of his hiatus. His forced hiatus because he didn’t want to serve in Vietnam in the Vietnam War. And so he was forced out of boxing and he’s kind of coming back. George Foreman has taken over this really powerful boxer, and a lot of people, most people think that George Foreman is going to crush Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali goes into this fight and he has this strategy of just standing up against the ropes and taking shot after shot from George Foreman, just taking shots, taking shots, taking shots. And eventually, George Foreman punches himself out. He gets tired. Muhammad Ali comes off the ropes, beats George Foreman. And so what makes me think about that in this instance is part of what I am thinking as a tactic with these major corporations trying to merge is that they have this rope-a-dope strategy. They’re out here like we’re not a threat. Small merger here, small merger there, no big deal. We’re not a threat. We’re not a threat as if they’re up against the ropes pretending to not be a threat. But then all of a sudden, you look up, and they’re knocking you out, right? They’re knocking this community out. They’ve accumulated so much power, they’ve weakened this community so much. Now, they’re taking over with all of their power and influence. So it feels very rope-a-dope-ish to me. Luke Gannon: It’s hard when these companies have “convincing arguments”, and if you don’t look at the history of what has happened with mergers, the consequences of what has happened, it’s easy when the companies are telling you that it’s going to be good for customers. Costs are going to go down, your rates are going to be decreased, you’re going to get better customer service, the list goes on. It’s easy to say, “Oh, well, I want all of those things you want. Yeah, we all want that, so let’s approve it.” But as a lot of people at ILSR have talked about, and a number of people beyond ILSR and on this podcast have talked about, if you look at the effects of these mergers, really across every industry, you’ll see that none of that’s actually true. And it really, the opposite generally happens. Reggie Rucker: Sometimes and you mentioned the Mariel example out in New Mexico. And sometimes we win, and I think even Jon Schwantes and you talked about this consumer reports in the coalition that they brought together when it was a Comcast and Time Warner merger, and they won that one. And so sometimes you win, but then what happens is these companies just have so much money. And so even if they lose the battle, they’re like, okay, we’ll just go to the next merger. We’ll just try again. Can you stop us again? Can you stop us again? And the ability to be able to muster up that opposition over and over and over again, that’s hard for the grassroots groups and the nonprofit groups and things like that. So yeah, these big powerful, influential companies, they know that they have this money and lobbying power and influence on their side that they can wear you down. And so that’s definitely one of the tactics that seem to come up over and over again throughout the season. Luke Gannon: Yeah, these companies will use every strategy they can, even if it’s slimy. And even sometimes if it’s illegal, they will do it ultimately to reap a profit at the expense of everyone else. So we just spoke about a few reasons of how companies get away with merger, but there are so many more. We encourage all of our listeners to go check out episodes from this season to get a comprehensive idea of how these mergers end up getting approved. Reggie, what was one of your takeaways? Reggie Rucker: I think the one thing that was consistent throughout the episode and actually made me think about the Dior St. Hillaire we did from BK Rots community composter up in Brooklyn. And she was just a great guest, and I am often thinking, she shared one of the composting songs that she made with us. Dior: Consistently talking about cycles microbial your life will leave us with a brighter future that is just nurture the kids. I’m talking about macro and micro. Organisms feed on the browns and greens. Another way to say this is carbon or nitrogen. Reggie Rucker: And for a month after that episode, I swear, I was like, singing this composting song. It’s so catchy. Whatever you do, go back and listen to this episode, find the song, link’s in the show notes. But it’s such a catchy song. But the thing that I think about most is the joy that she brings to her work, her advocacy work, her composting work, and the degree to which she said something in there about how composting truly is about community. And I think that’s one of these themes that I saw throughout all of the episodes is that the people who were doing the work win or lose, they were building this community around their work, and that community was a source of energy and a source of joy. And I don’t care what these merging companies say that their merger is going to do for you. If they’re going to save some money or they’re going to be able to serve more people. One, usually that’s a lie. But then even outside of that, one of the things that these companies just cannot do is bring communities together and infuse their work with this sense of community spirit and joy. And so that I think by far being able to have these conversations with these people on the ground who are building local solutions and building local power in the face of this corporate concentration, that’s always my favorite part of these episodes and definitely this season. Luke Gannon: Absolutely. So on the flip side of that, one of my takeaways is this general trend that we’ve had over the past 50 years towards this acceptance of bigness, both among our governmental institutions, among political figures, and among the public. Although I think what we’ve talked about a lot at ILSR is that this has really been changing in the last four years. Especially since we’ve had new people in both the administration with Joe Biden and in the Federal Trade Commission with Lina Kahn, who are totally changing this framework. But unfortunately, because we’ve gotten so far along this path of bigness and supporting big entities, and that’s why we have this season talking about these mergers and about bigness. We’ve become so accepting of this profit motive and the money that these massive institutions continue to make and that they really are putting profit over people. And we have… Every person on our episode has said this. We haven’t mentioned Miguel Escoto, who is down in Texas, who talks about the oil and gas industry in Texas. And how JP Morgan, one of the biggest banks, backs this infrastructure investment firm, which has a ton of investment in the oil and gas industry. And so just the idea of bigness that that is, I guess, the foundation of bigness being profit and money, that if that is your value system, if that’s really your only value system, it’s wrong because you’re not putting people or community in front of that. And so I think it really goes to your takeaway, Reggie, which is that can’t be what we’re placing first. And if it is, there’s an issue because you’re not having those community composters. You’re not having people like Dior who are making these amazing composting songs and people like Miguel who are building these amazing grassroots coalitions. Reggie Rucker: So I think we’re starting to see some of this stuff change. And there’s the Kroger Albertsons merger. And we don’t exactly know what’s going to happen there, but definitely feeling a greater sense of skepticism around that merger. Within the last year, it was the Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster merger that got blocked. And so I think there is a greater sense of, it’s not just about how much money can these companies make if they merge or save if they merge, or it’s not just about profit. It is about the impact to producers and the people who bring so much goodness into our life. How do we create an economy and markets that work for everyone and local producers and all producers, not just the big guys? Luke Gannon: Well, thank you so much, Reggie, for rounding this season out with me. It’s always a pleasure getting to work alongside you. And I really want to thank our guests this season who made each of these episodes possible. Thank you. And if you’ve made it this far, I assume that means you enjoyed this episode and maybe even the whole season. If you did, at dinner tonight or over coffee tomorrow morning, tell your family and friends about How to Get Away With Merger. What did you learn? What were your takeaways? And then if you’re feeling so inclined, send us an email at [email protected] and share your thoughts. We are trying to make every episode better and more engaging, so we’d love to hear from you. This is our last episode for 2023. We need your support to keep this podcast going, so if you can give us $1, $10, $100, more or less, or anything in between, we’d sincerely appreciate it. Every dollar counts. This marks the conclusion of our season, but be sure to stay tuned for our upcoming hyper-focused short seasons starting in the new year. Each season will take you to a different city exploring how it is cultivating robust local economies through various lenses. This show is produced by Reggie Rucker and me, Luke Gannon. This podcast is edited by Andrew Frank and me, Luke Gannon. The music for the season is also composed by Andrew Frank. Thank you so much for listening to Building Local Power.

Like this episode? Please help us reach a wider audience by sharing Building Local Power with your family and friends. We would love your feedback. Please email [email protected]. Subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice.

 

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

 

Music Credit: Andrew Frank

Photo Credit: Em McPhie, ILSR’s Digital Communications Manager

Podcast produced by Reggie Rucker and Luke Gannon

Podcast edited by Luke Gannon and Andrew Frank

Copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.

Follow the Institute for Local Self-Reliance on Twitter and Facebook and, for monthly updates on our work, sign-up for our ILSR general newsletter.

Is this the end of a grocery merger era that began with 385 grocery mergers from 1996-1999 alone? As news about the impending Federal Trade Commission decision to approve or deny the Kroger/Albertsons merger looms large, ILSR’s Ron Knox delves into the dominance of major grocery chains and explores the potential consequences of the proposed merger. In the second half of the episode, ILSR’s Kennedy Smith introduces her new “Community Wins” series, which highlights stories of communities establishing grocery stores that adopt innovative approaches to ownership, access, and governance. The burgeoning trend of community-driven grocery models is fueling a broader revolution of local initiatives across the country, fostering local economic resilience in the face of expanding corporate power.

Related Resources

Community Wins: How Do You Buy Groceries When There’s No Grocery Store? These Communities Figured It Out

Community Wins: In the Face of Consolidation, Communities are Opening Their Own Grocery Stores

“Americans don’t need another mega-grocer.” Stacy Mitchell Responds to Kroger’s Bid to Buy Albertsons

On Vox’s Today Explained: Ron Knox on Blocking the Kroger-Albertsons Supermerger

On Pitchfork Economics: Why We Can’t Let Kroger Buy Albertsons

Report: Walmart’s Monopolization of Local Grocery Markets

Transcript

Reggie Rucker: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Building Local Power. I am your co-host, Reggie Rucker, and I am so excited. You’re in for a real treat today with this episode because we have, not one, but two ILSR mates joining us to talk grocery stores, the good, the bad, and the consolidated. Keeping with this season’s theme, How to Get Away With Merger, we take a specific look at the Kroger-Albertson’s attempted merger, talk about why we hope it fails and what exists on the other side of a less consolidated grocery industry. To get into it, I’m going to toss it over to my co-host, who never fails to amaze me. Sometimes it’s a good amazement. Sometimes it’s bewilderment. Usually it’s the former. But in any case, Luke Gannon. What’s up, Luke? Luke Gannon: Aw, thank you, Reggie. I’m definitely glad to provide bewildering amazement too. But that was really a perfect introduction. I think you captured it all. So without further ado, we’re going to jump right into the interview. We have the pleasure of welcoming back a very familiar voice, Ron Knox. He’s a senior researcher and writer on the independent business team at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and he is very well-versed in the grocery industry. So in October of 2022, Kroger and Albertsons announced that they planned to merge. Since then, they’ve received significant opposition from advocacy organizations and the public. We will hear news from our regulatory agencies as soon as even a couple weeks, but definitely in early 2024, about whether this merger will be approved. So today, Ron is going to walk us through how our grocery sector has become so consolidated and the harms of an ever-increasing consolidated grocery sector on citizens, grocers and farmers. So thanks so much for joining us on the show today, Ron. Ron Knox: Great to be here. Thank you. Luke Gannon: All right. So Ron, to start us off, can you tell us a little bit about what the grocery industry looks like in the US right now? Who are the big players? And how much of the market do they control? Ron Knox: Sure. So the grocery industry is one of the more consolidated industries in America, to be honest, and I think it’s one of those industries where if you’re just a regular person, you just have to shop at the supermarket for the stuff that fills up your fridge and you’re covered, you’re definitely going to feel the effects of that consolidation. So the industry right now is pretty much dominated by four or five different mega chains, like supermarkets or superstores that kind of dominate a lot of our cities and towns across the country. Number one by a good margin is Walmart. Of course, Walmart’s a kind of multi retailer superstore type model, but they are the number one grocer in America. And then Kroger, Albertsons, Publix, and then a few others. And if this merger goes through, this Kroger-Albertsons merger that we’re discussing, if it were to go through, then the top four supermarket chains would control 55%, more than half of all supermarket sales in America. So super concentrated. And that’s been the product of a series of mergers that have been permitted over the last 30 years or so. There was certainly a time in America in the mid-century and beyond, through the 70s and 80s where there were many, many supermarket chains, lots of regional chains, lots of local independent stores that served neighborhoods and communities, towns and cities around the country. That all began to change in the 80s, as there was a significant revamp of the enforcement of our antitrust laws that really put a lot of emphasis on so-called efficiencies, this kind of bigger is better type of attitude, both among regulatory agencies and policymakers, and the result of that was a lot of consolidation was permitted. And so you end up with these kind of mega mergers that have happened throughout the years where now you have this ultra-concentrated sector that is threatening to become even more concentrated to a very dangerous level if this Kroger-Albertsons deal is allowed to go through. Reggie Rucker: Ron, actually, I want to do one quick followup, which is I’m here in DC, and I live right across the street from the Harris Teeter. And so as I hear you lay out the three, four or five big players in the industry, I don’t hear you say Harris Teeter, so I’m like, oh, I’m good. I don’t got to worry about. It’s not going to affect me. Can you talk a little bit about how these large sort of mega grocers and their brands sort of own these other brands so that it will actually affect me, even though it doesn’t sound like it when you first name off these grocers? Ron Knox: Yeah. For a lot of shoppers around the country, you say Kroger, you say Albertsons, maybe some of those are familiar names to some people in some parts of the country, but I think for most folks, it’s hard to imagine that those are two of the largest grocery chains in the US because those names don’t really ring a bell. But in a lot of places you don’t think you have a Kroger, but do you have a Harris Teeter? Yes. You might not think you have Albertsons, but do you have a Safeway? Yes. So between those two like mega chains, you have Fred Meyer, Dillons, Tom Thumb, King Soopers, Vons, Jewel-Osco, ACME. The list goes on and on. I’m probably forgetting some, but through, again, the decades of consolidation, those two mega chains have come to own all of these brands, all of these various supermarket chains that probably touch every single listener wherever they are in the US. Reggie Rucker: At some point, Kroger-Albertsons, they’re going to have to go before… or they’ve already submitted sort of the application. So they have to make a case beyond the, “Hey, we’re just trying to make more money. That’s why we want to merge.” They’re trying to sell to the FTC, and then likely they’re going to have to try to sell to some judge why they’re doing this, why this is good for not just them. Can you talk a little bit about what their argument is, or what you think their argument’s going to be should it get that far? What are they saying to try to make the case why this should happen? Ron Knox: The companies say what a lot of merging companies say when they propose these kinds of mega mergers, right? Kroger and Albertsons have both promised millions of dollars in “cost savings” due to the merger and that these cost savings are going to allow them to do things that sound good and sound pro-competitive, like lower prices for consumers and offer better product selection and do all of those kinds of things. The truth is that those cost savings… And you can just look at the history of supermarket mergers, and you can easily see this… those cost savings, what that really means is closed stores, laid-off workers, weakened supply chains, and then those savings are routinely never passed on to customers. Those cost savings simply show up as increased profits, and those increased profits allow the companies to do things like buy back their own shares from stockholders and offer these dividends, things that increase their stock prices and make shareholders happy, but that have no real reflection of the benefits to you and me and regular shoppers around the country. Luke Gannon: And then, Ron, can you just dive into that a little more? When this news was released, there has been a lot of public opposition, including from ILSR. So what has this looked like? If this merger was approved, what really are the consequences that people suspect are going to happen? Ron Knox: Well, I mean, it’s funny because the consequences are also what the companies allege are the benefits, right? Now these companies say, “Look, we have to do this merger because there’s no other way for us to compete with the Walmarts of the world. We have to get bigger because they’re bigger, and only through this bigness can we survive.” A, that’s pretty obviously untrue. If you just look at the amount of money these companies make, the amount of shareholder buybacks and of dividends they already offer, they’re doing fine. So that’s not really true. But I think what is true is that they do want to be as big as Walmart. And what does that mean? Well, that means that they have the power to bully everybody else in the supply chain, everybody else in the economy. And sure, I absolutely 100% believe that they want that. They want to be able to tell their suppliers, “Sorry, we’re going to pay you what we want to pay you,” and they’re going to be able to look at small businesses who maybe supply them with produce or other dry goods that end up on the shelves of these supermarkets, and they’re going to say, “Look, you’re either going to give us the price we want, or you can take a hike because we’re dealing with the biggest suppliers, the biggest food producers on earth, and that’s who we’re going to do business with.” So it’s this bigness begets bigness, this kind of conspiracy between the really big suppliers and the really big supermarket chains. And that’s what Kroger-Albertsons wants. They want that power, but that power comes at the detriment and creates harm for everybody else in the economy, particularly small businesses and of course, particularly consumers, because the bigger a supermarket chain is, let’s be honest, the easier it is for them to raise prices, because they don’t have a lot of competition to keep those prices down. So that affects all of us. Luke Gannon: Ron, can you just give us a timeline for our listeners of the three possible scenarios that the Federal Trade Commission is expected to make in this decision? Ron Knox: Sure. So the FTC could basically do one of three things here. The first is they could say yes to this merger as it was originally proposed, one company buying the other company, lock, stock and barrel. So that’s one thing that could happen. The other thing that could happen is that the FTC could say yes, but with conditions, and those conditions include the companies they’ve proposed to sell off, I think more than 400 stores in places where there’s a lot of head-to-head competition, and they say that’s going to solve the problem. And the FTC could agree with them and could say yes to the merger based on those conditions. What I think is much more likely to happen is the third thing, and that’s the FTC looks at the deal, looks at all the competition problems and all the various ways that that competition exists and say, “No, there’s no fix, and so we are going to say no to this merger, and we’re going to file a lawsuit in federal court to enjoin the merger.” That’s the legalese for that. And then at that point, the federal court will go through its regular civil litigation process, sped up a little bit. It’ll probably take somewhere like nine months or a year or so to get through it, but it’ll have all of the hallmarks of a civil litigation with discovery and various motions filed by both sides and then eventually a trial to decide whether or not this deal is going to go through. But I think that is the most likely thing to happen. And indeed, if the FTC does sue these companies to block the merger, I think they’re right to do so. I mean, again, there are lots of reasons for that, right? The supermarket industry is one that touches all of our lives every single day, right? I don’t care if you’re rich or poor, you’re going to the supermarket, and you’re buying the stuff on the shelves, and the prices that you find on those shelves have an effect. What we are saying, what we’re pushing for is for the FTC to simply say no to this deal. And that’s something that, I mean, to be honest, in the world of antitrust merger regulation, it’s something that just hasn’t happened in like 30, 40 years. You just never saw an agency that, by the way, whose job it is to protect the public from this kind of consolidated corporate power, from these price increases, from the ability for these big companies to bully workers and suppliers and everybody else… These agencies that are charged with doing that simply didn’t do the job for about 30 or 40 years. And they said yes to all these deals. Maybe they had a few conditions, some strings attached maybe, maybe they didn’t, but they said yes, and they said yes consistently. And the American public has been dealing with the harms of that. So what we’re telling the FTC to do, or we’re hoping that the FTC indeed does, is to simply say no. And we believe that there is honestly no way to fix this merger to where it’s not going to inflict significant harms on communities, workers and small businesses around the country. Luke Gannon: Sort of close us out here, I’m curious, what does the future of the grocery industry look like in both scenarios if the Kroger-Albertsons merger is approved and if it is denied? Ron Knox: Let’s say that the deal gets approved. So what happens then? If the deal gets approved as the companies are proposing, the companies say, “Well, look, we’re going to sell off like 400 stores in all these cities and towns on the West Coast and elsewhere where there’s a lot of competitive overlap, basically where Kroger and Albertsons compete head to head.” They say, “We’re going to sell off a bunch of these stores to a new third party, and they’re going to run them, and everything’s going to be peachy keen. There’s just not going to be a problem at all,” right? What happens then? Two likely things. One, as we have seen before, those kinds of divestitures to some third party not accustomed to operating big supermarkets, not accustomed to operating that level, that number, that sheer quantity of stores, all of a sudden they can’t do the job. And then you end up with this kind of cascading catastrophe where you have stores that are unable to operate, and they simply close or they’re sold back to the original parent companies because these third parties just can’t do it. So you have this staggering failure, and it’s the exact kind of thing that happened when Albertsons bought Safeway. And it was this drama that resulted in lost jobs in food deserts and all these real problems in real places around the country. The other thing if the deal goes through is that even when you sell off stores… Let’s say that that happens, and let’s say hypothetically that that selloff is successful, which is super unlikely, but let’s say that that is what happens… you still end up with this merged conglomerate company with even more power to dictate the prices for all of the different things that it buys, whether it’s the produce in the produce section, the dry goods on the shelves or workers who are actually stocking those shelves and checking out groceries and bagging goods. Even with the divestiture, even with this supposed fix, you don’t fix that problem, and you don’t end up with a company that is competitively sized when it comes to the things that it buys. So that is essentially unsolvable, and that’s what happens if that deal goes through. Now, what happens if the deal is blocked? Well, I mean, a few things, right? First thing is this super important shift in the way that our regulatory agencies behave and the messages that they send to the corporate world. If the FTC blocks this deal, that’s the FTC saying, “Look, don’t bring this stuff to us. Don’t think about it.” All right? “Don’t let this stuff get out of the boardroom, because we are going to fight you tooth and nail, and you’re going to rack up hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees. And we’re going to drag you through the mud, and the public’s going to hate you, and all this other stuff is going to happen. Your shareholders aren’t going to like it because they don’t want to have to go through this stuff,” right? “Don’t even bring this stuff to us.” That’s the first thing. And the second thing is that, look, in any market… I don’t care whether it’s supermarkets or airlines or cell phones or whatever… when you say no to a merger, the thing you’re saying yes to is opportunity, opportunity for another company to come in and gain a foothold and compete in that market, lower prices, offer better benefits to workers, offer better prices and opportunities to suppliers, all those kinds of things. It’s this idea that when you say no to concentration, you say yes to deconcentration, you say yes to more opportunity, more things in more places, fewer food deserts, better opportunities for unions to come in and organize workers and give them better pay. All these kinds of things happen. So the benefits are multifold, as are the risks, if the FTC lets this one go through. Reggie Rucker: Ron, always so great to have you. Thank you for your expertise and perspective on this. What I love most about what Ron just shared and why I want to quickly get you to the second half of this episode is the part about it’s not just being some sort of punishment for bigness because like boo, we hate bigness. It’s the bigness, the consolidation that blocks the beautiful, local, connected outcomes that we get when people in communities have the space and freedom to exist and create together with each other the solutions that will make their community stronger and healthier and more vibrant. This next half of the episode has some great stories of communities doing just this to make sure that their neighbors have access to quality, affordable food for their families. I’m going to toss it back to Luke to take us through these stories. Luke Gannon: Up next, we’ll share stories from ILSR’s new Community Wins series, spotlighting how communities are combating corporate power in building local self-reliance. Kennedy Smith, a senior researcher at ILSR, an author of these articles, will guide us through some of these narratives. We’ll first take you to the tiny town in Cody, Nebraska. Here’s Kennedy. Kennedy Smith: There was a high school class in Cody that jumpstarted a market there called Circle C in 2008. It’s a tiny town. It only has 167 people. And they’d lost a grocery store, and what were they going to do? That state senator for rural affairs helped the community plan the store and secure startup funding from the USDA and several foundations to get it going. It’s operated as a nonprofit organization with a board of directors. The town’s government owns the building, and there’s a full-time manager who oversees the day-to-day operations. The store is staffed mostly by high school students who are learning how to run a grocery store and how to run a business in general by the experience of it. Luke Gannon: Cody is reaping the benefits of the school-run grocery store, eliminating the need for a one-hour journey to reach the next closest grocery store, which is a common challenge faced by many individuals in rural areas living in food deserts. Kennedy Smith: I think that more and more local governments are realizing, especially in smaller communities and in urban neighborhoods, places that have really been starved of food options for a long time, local governments are realizing that access to healthy, affordable food is really a human right, and government has a role to play in helping make that happen. And so I’m seeing communities taking sort of little baby steps in that direction, like in this instance where the local government owned the building. There are actually a couple of bigger examples, like in Baldwin, Florida and a few communities in Kansas, where local government decided, look, we have no grocery store. We don’t see anybody coming knocking on the door wanting to open one, so we, the local government, are going to do it ourselves. And so those are completely municipally-owned grocery stores that operate. Luke Gannon: There are various types of grocery stores and operation supported by diverse sources, including local governments providing funds from the federal government through the American Rescue Plan Act, contributions from community charities, for-profit institutions within the community and individual investments. A common theme in the stories Kennedy writes about is a profound commitment to addressing the specific needs of the community. Up north in Evansville, Minnesota, a small town has found a solution that works for them. Kennedy Smith: Evansville had lost its only grocery store in the mid 2010s, and the closest full-service store was 20 miles away. So this local couple, with the help of some community residents who chipped in some money to help renovate this building, opened this store called Main Street Market, which is largely a self-service grocery store. It’s staffed three days a week, but on the days that it’s closed, people who are members, which is 75 bucks a year, use an app on their telephones to open the door, scan things they want to buy and pay for the order. So each customer has a unique code so the owners know who’s in the store all the time, but there hasn’t been any issue with shoplifting at all. It’s very much honor system. Luke Gannon: One local resident in Evansville says that having this local grocery option in town is a game-changer. Speaker 6: It’s just so handy for me. I mean, I don’t have to drive 20, 30, 40, 50 miles to buy a loaf of bread or a can of soup. I can just walk next door. Kennedy Smith: Customers can even write suggestions on a chalkboard inside the store about things they’d like to see the store get in stock, and so they can then go and get those things for the store. And that idea, I mean, it sounds kind of unique, and Evansville is the first place that I know of that did it, but I’m also beginning to see that pop up in larger cities, like in Denver and San Diego, where you see some apartment buildings and condominium buildings that have self-service grocery stores popping up on their first floors. And it’s a fairly common thing also in parts of Europe and even in parts of Canada. Luke Gannon: In the last 30 plus years, we’ve seen a mass exodus of locally-owned grocery stores. Black-owned grocery stores have been particularly hard hit. Kennedy Smith: Now looking back 100 years or so, the historically black commercial districts were well-served by locally-owned grocery stores. And at some point along the way, that began dropping pretty dramatically. In 1969, according to the Census Bureau, there were more than 11,000 Black-owned food stores in the US, but a couple of decades later that had dropped by 28% to 8,000, and it’s continued to drop. And it obviously is part of a larger morass of factors that include the development of the interstate highway system and White flight and grocery industry consolidation. Luke Gannon: In 2015, there was an article that said there were only two Black-owned grocery stores left in the US. In May of 2018, another article said that there were 10. But today there are beginning to bounce back. In 2020, an article stated that 60 Black-owned grocery stores opened. Communities are tired of not having good options, and they are taking matters into their own hands. One community is taking matters into their own hands in Chicago. Kennedy Smith: There was this woman named Liz Abunaw, who actually was a relatively recent MBA grad from University of Chicago. And she was going to O’Hare Airport on a bus, and she stopped in this neighborhood on the way there, Austin, thinking that she could stop at an ATM and get some cash for her trip- Luke Gannon: Here’s Liz. Liz Abunaw: Immediately noticing a lack of resources. They didn’t have a grocery store. They didn’t have a bank. Kennedy Smith: And was just blown away by the fact that there was nothing. And she was like how can this be that we have a city that has neighborhoods that are so thriving and then places like this that just have nothing? And so she decided to do something about it and got back from her trip and got busy putting together the financing for this store that she’s calling Forty Acres Fresh Market, obviously harking back to the unrealized reconstruction dream of giving formerly enslaved people 40 acres and a mule, which is where the name comes from. And she began on a small scale by doing pop-up markets and going to farmer’s markets and doing deliveries of food boxes that people could buy. She’d put together a box of fresh vegetables, box of fresh fruit and doing deliveries that way. So she basically operated for her first couple of years without a physical storefront, just having a warehouse to put things together in. But she then began raising money, and she’s been very successful in raising money. She’s gotten $185,000 from USDA’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative, $150,000 from the American Heart Association, $2.5 million dollars from the city of Chicago’s Recovery Plan Community Development Grant, and even Famous Amos, the cookie manufacturer, has chipped in 50,000 bucks. And she was finally able to buy a building, a former Salvation Army building, and just broke ground this past month in November of 2023 on doing the renovations for that building to open a full-service grocery store there in this neighborhood that’s had nothing for years. Luke Gannon: In all of these examples, communities are uniting to cultivate robust local economies, resisting the economic turbulence caused by chains and monopolistic corporations seeking to extract wealth and dictate their future. In the Community Wins series, Kennedy writes about these new grocery models popping up around the country, including mobile, self-service, community-assisted, cooperative and publicly-owned grocery stores. But why now? Kennedy Smith: I think that there’s something about the pandemic and the fact that people just began thinking about how to do things differently that began to spur some of this thinking. I think that the availability of money through the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan Act have made some things happen that might not have been possible a few years before. And I think that there’s just sort of a greater sense of needing to take care of each other now than there might’ve been five or 10 years ago. I think that people are just no longer hesitant to step into the arena and say I’m going to go to a city council meeting and talk about the need for this, or I’m going to get together with my neighbors or the school group, and we’re going to try to figure out some solutions. And I think the kids are doing that too. You look at the example of Cody, Nebraska and some of these other places where they really are the kids who’ve pulled this together. One of the examples that is not making it into my new article, but I found very inspiring, was also in Detroit. And it was this group of a dozen or so high school students who wanted a food market of some kind in their community, in their neighborhood, and thought they could do it as a popup during the summer. And they ended up talking to a Chicago Bears player, who loved the idea so much that he kicked in a half a million dollars for them to do it. And so they took over a former liquor store and turned it into a 12-week market during the summer. And again, they all got firsthand experience in that. So I think there’s something about this younger generation really feeling empowered to think outside the box and do some different things. And then of course, there’s just all the, I think, the sense of people being fed up with so much wealth in the US and in the world gravitating into the pockets of just a few people and a few big companies. And people are recognizing that there’s something going on there that they’re not happy with and therefore looking for local solutions. And what I think we’re seeing are solutions that, whether it’s in terms of the product mix that these stores offer or their organizational model that they’re using or how they’re funded, whatever it is, they’re finding solutions that work for that community. And it may work there and may not work anywhere else. It may in part work someplace else. But that’s great. People are experimenting not just with new models for grocery stores, but the same thought that goes into what organizational model, what funding solution, what product mix can help businesses across the horizon. And so I think that there are going to be lessons beyond those that the grocery industry can learn and those that people in communities looking for grocery stores can learn that they can apply to other business development activities in the future too. It’s moving so much now towards consolidation that these stories are really heartening because they’re so unique and they’re such a good fit for each place. Luke Gannon: Kennedy showcases stories from individuals across the country who in the face of daunting challenges are wholeheartedly dedicating themselves to the cause of improving their communities. Thanks so much for joining us today, Kennedy, to highlight these. Now I’m going to pass it over to my co-host, who just learned why the en and em dash have their names. Fortunately, Reggie is well-versed in matters far more significant than the en and em dash. Reggie, the floor is yours. Reggie Rucker: Thanks, Luke. Great job as always. And thank you, Kennedy and Ron, for being on the show today. It’s such a joy, a pleasure, a privilege to be able to work with both of you. And to all of you at home or in your cars or wherever you’re listening, thank you. If you made it this far, I assume that means you enjoyed this episode. So it’s my sworn duty to ask you to share it with even just one person you think will enjoy it too. Let’s get to that 10,000 listens so we can bring more people into these conversations about the type of society we want to live in, where the interest of us citizens is put above the interest of giant corporations and their deep-pocketed investors. And if you’re not a subscriber to the podcast yet, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you know when every new episode drops. And of course, your donations are essential to help us keep this podcast going and support the research and resources that we make available on our website for free. We truly welcome and appreciate it all. And last, if you just have some feedback for us, we want to share a story about how your community approaches this issue. Or if you just want to share about when you first learned why it’s called an em dash and an en dash, send us an email to [email protected]. We’d love to share these in a special mailbag episode one day. We’ll definitely keep an eye out. This show is produced by Luke Gannon and me, Reggie Rucker. This podcast is edited by Luke Gannon and Andrew Frank. The music for this season is also composed by Andrew Frank. Thank you so much for listening to Building Local Power.

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Music Credit: Andrew Frank

Photo Credit: Em McPhie, ILSR’s Digital Communications Manager

Podcast produced by Reggie Rucker and Luke Gannon

Podcast edited by Luke Gannon and Andrew Frank

Copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.

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In many places across the country, broadband communications provider, Sparklight, has a monopoly in rural towns where they price gouge their customers and deliver poor service. It has significantly expanded its presence across the U.S. through acquisitions and investments in broadband companies in recent years, and East Carroll Parrish leaders Wanda Manning and Laura Arvin have experienced the consequences of this consolidation firsthand. The two journey through their experience fending off Sparklight in their small Southern town, building a task force to create a fiber-to-the-home network so historically marginalized populations could have fast and affordable Internet access, addressing the challenges faced by communities left out of the digital landscape.

Related Resources

Profiles of Monopoly: Big Cable and Telecom

New Video: Coalition of Community Broadband Advocates Prevail in Louisiana

East Carroll Parish Residents in Louisiana Fend Off Sparklight Challenge

Louisiana First State to Get BEAD Planning Funds as State GUMBO Grants Get Messy

Louisiana Upholds $4 Million Grant to Expand Internet Access in East Carroll 

Cable One Completes Acquisition of Fidelity Communications

Cable One buys remaining stake in Hargray in $2.2B deal

Cable ONE agrees to acquire CableAmerica assets

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry

Books:

• The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality by Brink Linsey & Steven M. Teles
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Transcript

Reggie Rucker: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Building Local Power. I’m your co-host, Reggie Rucker, and on today’s show we have the privilege of hearing from two guests who stared down monopoly giants that basically gave them the middle finger when all they asked was for reliable, affordable internet service to connect to and take care of their community. And in keeping with this season’s theme, How to Get Away with Merger, we look at how this need to even ask monopoly giants for connectivity to community and health and opportunity is only necessary because of the concentration allowed through large mergers and acquisitions. Today we look at Cable One, which now goes by Sparklight, and how a series of acquisitions in recent years helped to make them a dominant player in the southern region with the power to pick and choose who they provide service to and how this requires communities to make heroic efforts just to get what so many are able to take for granted. To tell more of this story, I’m going to pass it over to my co-host who has not once given me the middle finger, at least not to my face, and that’s Luke Gannon. What’s up, Luke? Luke Gannon: Reggie, I would never give you the middle finger. So before we jump into hearing from our guests today, I’m going to provide some background on Sparklight and its history. Sparklight, as Reggie mentioned, is a part of Cable One’s family of brands, and it’s a broadband communications provider that serves more than 1 million residential and business customers in 24 states. So a few years ago, Cable One changed its name to Sparklight to transition to a broadband-first strategy because they saw that so many people were turning to digital video content on their mobile devices or to social media. So as a part of this rebranding strategy and shifting their focus on broadband, they are now trying to acquire and grow. Reggie Rucker: So, Luke, what did you notice as you looked at the pattern of these acquisitions? Luke Gannon: To me, it seems like Sparklight has been conducting a series of smaller acquisitions over the last few years, slowly growing its footprint across the United States. In 2019, Sparklight acquired Fidelity Communications, which expanded its footprint by 190,000 homes across primarily Southern and Midwestern states. Then in 2020, Sparklight bought a 45% stake in Mega Broadband Investments’ holdings, which is a private equity firm, for $574 million. And then in 2021, Sparklight announced that it would be acquiring equity interests in Hargray Communications, which is a telecommunications provider. Reggie Rucker: So, Luke, explain the equity interest. What does that look like in this case? Luke Gannon: So Sparklight will represent 85% of Hargray. Its stake in Hargray will expand their footprint in the Southeastern US. So really just over the last few years we’ve seen Sparklight inching its way across the United States, becoming larger and larger and, as I’ve read oftentimes, providing poor and expensive service. Reggie Rucker: So, Luke, what is Sparklight, Cable One, what are they saying as they buy up all of these telecommunications, broadband companies? What are they sort of professing is going to be sort of the positive outcome of these acquisitions? Luke Gannon: In most of the articles I’ve read about these acquisitions, Sparklight has said that by acquiring X company, it will create a “superior experience for customers and increase value for shareholders.” But unfortunately, as the East Carroll Parish story that you’ll hear next so clearly illustrates, the customer experience is really bad. And that’s why all this organizing happened, to build something that actually worked for the community in East Carroll Parish. And that was led by the community, not some outside massive corporation coming in and deciding who to serve and then leaving out a huge part of the population. So in East Carroll Parish, Sparklight and AT&T were really the only two providers in town. And in many places across the country, Sparklight has a monopoly in rural towns where they are price gouging their customers, which basically means that because there is no one else to compete with, they increase their rates. And then on top of that, due to this lack of competition, they can also provide terrible service because there is really no incentive to do better. Reggie Rucker: Such a great intro, Luke. Thank you so much for that. Okay, so tell us what’s coming up next on the show. Luke Gannon: So on the show today, Wanda Manning and Laura Arvin are going to detail their story working with Delta Interfaith and organizing a task force around building their own fiber to the home network where everyone in East Carroll Parish could have access to affordable, fast broadband. Without further ado, we are going to start from the beginning of Wanda’s story. Wanda Manning: Well, I grew up here in Lake Providence. Lake Providence is a small agricultural town. The lake, we were named after of it, it’s like a oxbow. And the town is a beautiful little plain town in northeast Louisiana, right at the tip-top of the boot, in the northeast corner, far, far northeast corner. Well, it’s always been a beautiful town to me, and yes, we have our own issues here in East Carroll Parish, like any other town. East Carroll Parish is the parish, and I live in Lake Providence, and that’s our town. So I grew up in a large family, nine of us, five sisters and three brothers, and it was always something going on in the house. We lived next door to my grandmother. We call her Mama Lena. And for many years my family pushed education. And as my grandmother taught us that old adage, “If you give a man a fish, you can feed him for one day, but if you teach him how to fish, you could feed him for a lifetime,” and was always work. And I chopped cotton… We’re in the south… as a child coming up. So with education being pushed all the time, I knew I didn’t want to chop cotton all my life, right? So it was hot. It was really hot. But it served its purpose, and there was a lot of life lessons in it. But although I grew up in a large family, I spent a lot of time reading books. I spent a lot of time by myself. I was always up to something, creating stuff. I wanted to be a fashion designer. I made my own fashion paper dolls. I loved watching my family and my friends get together to have fun. And my father loved sports, so we played lots of touch football, or they call it setback. And to this very day, I can throw a football better than most guys. But my daddy didn’t allow the girls to be tackled, and the boys were just furious. And although I’m a little rusty, I can still throw that football. So, well, with everything said about my family and stuff and education was the main thing pushed, I became a teacher, and I taught for 32 plus years. And my parents were always assisting in the community in one form or fashion. So one of the stories I recall from my childhood is what my father did. One night a family came to our house. And it was a knock on the door, and we heard the commotion. We’re all seated getting ready for supper, and all of a sudden my dad came in at the table. He took half of my food off my plate, half of my sister’s them food off of their plates, and we were just sitting around looking like… So it was years down the road that I figured out that it was a family outside of that door. They didn’t ask for money. They asked for food. So my father made a way to give them food. So I learned in life that whatever you have to share, you share because in my spiritual upbringing, in my church upbringing is if you are blessed, you are created to be a blessing. So sharing was a part of what we did. My mom took for funerals throughout the town of Lake Providence and all around Lake Providence, always serving somebody, so many funerals that she served at and cook for, I can’t put a number to it, not to this day. So we were always sent to somebody’s house, some elderly person’s house to clean up or run errands. And I didn’t realize just how much of my childhood was spent in the community. Luke Gannon: Today Wanda remains actively engaged in the community. After dedicating 32 years to teaching in East Carroll Parish, in 2020 Wanda, like the rest of the world, experienced a profound wake-up call. Wanda Manning: 2020 forced me out the classroom with underlining conditions behind COVID, right? The pandemic just ripped the bandage off of everything. So I was in the classroom teaching, and one of my former students, I thought the kid was just playing in and out of his virtual class. And I was infuriated. And so I did not know at that time dial-up was still a thing. You all, it was so frustrating to have a child not stay in that virtual class. So during that particular time, when I came out in November of 2020, I went out and I got a chance to talk to Nathan and his mother, Tabitha. So I found out in our conversation this kid was on dial-up in a virtual class. Dial-up can’t sustain a [inaudible 00:11:30] call, less long a virtual class. So I told Nathan, I said, “Baby, I apologize for fussing at you so because I didn’t know you had such poor connection.” So I said, “If I don’t do anything, I’m going to make sure you get some good internet out here.” And that’s how my journey got started, with a former student and just dirt poor connection. Luke Gannon: As a teacher, when COVID struck, Wanda quickly recognized the significant lack of internet access that many of her students faced. In 2020, she became actively involved in Delta Interfaith, a broad-based coalition of congregations and organizations dedicated to addressing problems large and small. It was there that she crossed paths with Laura Arvin. Here’s Laura. Laura Arvin: I got involved in Delta Interfaith because I wanted to get more involved in the community. I grew up here myself and moved back to help take care of my mother. And when she passed, I was looking for some way to get involved into the community. And so it was perfect because I was able to meet people from all walks of life. Luke Gannon: Laura became a member of Delta Interfaith when the pandemic struck. Soon after, she along with a group of volunteers formed a task force dedicated to organizing initiatives aimed at bridging the digital divide. Laura Arvin: The task force met with AT&T, who is the old guard incumbent here, pretending to offer internet. AT&T and Sparklight were the two entities in town that offered internet. We had those choices. And if you looked at what was needed from the pandemic, the AT&T service was not viable. So basically, we had one choice if you wanted to do online school, and that’s Sparklight, which is expensive and therefore not affordable for a lot of people. Luke Gannon: As children transitioned from in-person to remote schooling, Laura and Wanda recognized that the available options for internet providers were inadequate. They embarked on a lengthy journey of research, meetings with representatives, securing funding and forming alliances with electric cooperatives. Their goal was to build a compelling case for ensuring that every individual in East Carroll Parish had access to reliable internet connectivity. Laura Arvin: We met with AT&T representatives. We met with Sparklight representatives online. We met with all kinds of local industries. How were they working to get their internet? We worked with the school system, finding all these things. The task force ended up fighting off this company that came in and wanted to build a magic entity. They were going to solve all our broadband problems to the tune of $50 million in bonds that they were going to sell, that if the network failed, the town would’ve been on the hook for, the town and the parish. So by that time, we had researched and we were beginning to get our organizing chops, so to speak. So we were able to fend them off, and we identified a partner who had won the RDOF money for our parish, who was also building networks for the electric co-op next door to us and also had some customers in East Carroll. So Delta Interfaith Broadband Committee worked with them to help them gather information to submit a GUMBO grant application. And we worked hard. We helped them gather the information. And after a lot of waiting, the grant was awarded. And so we celebrated, but there was a protest process in place that we were aware of, but at the 11th hour, literally Sparklight comes in and says, “Nope, we serve those people already,” or, “We serve the majority of them, so you can’t give money to serve those people.” And the GUMBO grant is the granting unserved municipalities broadband opportunities. So they might have technically had AT&T, but there were some standards there that they had to reach, and so AT&T couldn’t. So basically, they were unserved, but with Sparklight’s protests, it pretty much put a halt in things. And at that point, Delta Interfaith pivoted. We started going out and doing press conferences. We’d traveled to Baton Rouge and spoke in front of the office of administration that ran the broadband grant program. We did media interviews. We chatted with Chris Mitchell on the ILSR Community Broadband bits and did a lot of print interviews and reached out to public officials. And then we also met with Sparklight directly. We went over to Monroe to their regional office and met on Zoom. And by the way, they had internet problems hooking into their Arizona and Florida offices, where these big wigs were. We were sitting with the regional manager, who we had spoken with way back in 2020. That was who we talked with, saying, “Can you extend your network further out into the parish?” And at that time they said, “No, it’s not a good return on investment for us. We can’t do this.” And AT&T had told us, “Be happy with what you have.” So when we met them a second time, we had a little bit of a fire in our bellies. Luke Gannon: The flames of that fire were fanned out one day when a Sparklight general manager, Charlie Oaks, made Wanda an offer he hoped she wouldn’t refuse. Wanda Manning: So Charlie Oaks called me and said, “Well, Wanda, well, I’m going to do this and that for you on your bill so it could come down, and you’ll have great service and all of this cool stuff.” I said, “Oh really?” I said, “That’s awesome.” I said, “But are you going to do that for everybody else too?” You don’t just do it for one person. There’s a whole community of people coming up short with poor services. And we pay big money for Sparklight for their services and get poor freaking services. Luke Gannon: But because Wanda wouldn’t be bought and kept advocating for all of her community alongside Laura and the rest of Delta Interfaith, today residents of East Carroll Parish are celebrating Louisiana’s Office of Broadband Development and Connectivity’s decision to uphold a $4 million GUMBO grant to bring fiber to the home internet service to over 2,500 households in one of the most poorly connected parts of the state. Community building is power building. Wanda Manning: My standpoint is that as a community-based organization built with community churches and people that are interested in the betterment of our town, we wanted change. We even had two great assemblies to gather people up to create power, because as a young person during the early 70s, late 80s, trying to organize some stuff in school, power can be one person, but you struggle so hard with it. But when you got organized people with the same mindset and growing a thing or a situation, you get great strategies and some great ideas. And that’s what has happened in Delta Interfaith. We strive for the betterment of our town. We want our children to have better, and the only way that we can have better for them is that we lay the foundation. Laura Arvin: And it is about those relationships, reaching across all of these possible, probable divides, real issues that have been struggled with to learn together about how to do things. I mean, we’re learning as a group all the time. Wanda Manning: This fight, it’s pertinent to me as an educator. With technology as an ongoing entity, we need to stay abreast. To stay abreast, it need to be affordable, reliable and sustainable. There’s no connection to other entities outside of East Carroll Parish if we can’t sustain a connection. This fight is so important because I know that there are homes that do remote jobs. Telehealth is very crucial in East Carroll Parish because even I myself have to drive 72 plus miles for a doctor appointment [inaudible 00:21:26]. So some of the things that we can carve out using the internet, it takes the strain off our pockets, off our time and put things back in the order that it’s supposed to be, especially concerning all children. Everybody don’t have the necessary means to travel to be educated at ULM, Grambling Southern or any other university. So with good, sustainable internet, it meets the need. And we have to have this fight and this discussion about not being left behind. Luke Gannon: It’s that time of the episode for Wanda and Laura to share their book recommendations. Here’s Laura. Laura Arvin: One of my most favorite poets is Wendell Berry. There’s a poem called Manifesto of the Mad Farmer. And every now and then when I get frustrated, I go back and read that poem, and it’s just awesome. Wanda Manning: The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves and Slow Down Growth and Increase Inequality by Brink Lindsey and Steve Teles a interesting read, very interesting. You learn some stuff about the economy and big companies, how they just steady do the wrong thing. And that scripture, or part of scripture says, “The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer,” and that comes to mind. And one of them is a hard read. You can’t be faint of heart With Charles Dickens, right? The Tale of Two Cities is what I relate to. And even coming up, the first line, “It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times,” and I’ve always equated that with East Carroll Parish because of the struggles and the parallelisms between the two situations that was battling out in the book. Luke Gannon: Well, thank you so much, Wanda and Laura, for joining us on the show today. You all have accomplished an amazing feat in East Carroll Parish and really shown the world what is possible for bridging the digital divide. Now passing it over to the incredible Reggie Rucker to close us out. Reggie Rucker: Thank you, Luke. Again, what a great job on this episode. And, again, Laura and Wanda, thank you for telling such an inspiring and empowering story. It truly is moving to hear about all the great work that you’re doing down in East Carroll Parish. And for all of you listening, thanks for sticking with us until the end. I assume that means you like this episode, so please share with even just one person you think will enjoy it too. We have a goal of 10,000 listens for this episode, so help us get there. And if you’re not a subscriber to the podcast yet, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you know when every new episode drops. And, of course, your donations are essential to help us keep this podcast going and support the research and resources that we make available on our website for free. We truly welcome and appreciate it all. And last, if you have feedback for us or want to share a story about how your community approaches this issue, send us an email to [email protected]. We’d love to share these on a special mailbag episode one day. We’ll definitely keep an eye out. This show is produced by Luke Gannon and me, Reggie Rucker. This podcast is edited by Luke Gannon and Andrew Frank. The music for this season is also composed by Andrew Frank. Thank you so much for listening to Building Local Power.

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Music Credit: Andrew Frank

Photo Credit: Em McPhie, ILSR’s Digital Communications Manager

Podcast produced by Reggie Rucker and Luke Gannon

Podcast edited by Luke Gannon and Andrew Frank

Copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.

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